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Photographic 

Sciences 
Corporation 


23  WEST  MAIN  STFEET 

WEBSTER  N.Y.  I4S80 

(716)  872-4503 


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la  dernidre  page  qui  comporte  une  telle 
empreinte. 

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dernidre  image  de  chaque  microfiche,  selon  le 
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symbole  \?  signifie  "FIN". 

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filmds  d  des  taux  de  reduction  diffdrents. 
Lorsque  le  document  est  trop  granH  pour  §tre 
reproduit  en  un  seul  clich6,  il  est  filmd  d  partir 
de  Tangle  supdrieur  gauche,  de  gauche  d  droite, 
et  de  haut  en  bas,  en  prenant  le  nombre 
d'images  ndcessaire.  Les  diagrammes  suivants 
illustrent  la  mdthode. 


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32X 


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DOCKS.   WHAHVKS,   i    bOOM    DAM   OF  THE   ANCIKN  T  CITY   OK   NORUMUEGA,   ON    'I'HE 
CHARLES   RIVER   AT  VVATERTOWN,  MASS. 


BOOM    DAM    ON    COLD   SPRING    BROOK,    OPPOSITE    WATERTOWN. 


THE   DISCOVERY 


OF    THE 


ANCIENT  CITY  OF  NORUMBEGA. 


a  Communtcatfon 


TO 


THE   PRESIDENT  AND  COUNCIL  OF  THE  AMERICAN 
GEOGRAPHICAL    SOCIETY 


AT  THEIR   SPECIAL   SESSION   IN   WATERTOWN, 


November  21,  1889. 


BY 


EBEN   NORTON    HORSFORD. 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK : 

HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND   COMPANY. 

Cite  Bitotrsilic  Prceti,  (JDambrtUfft. 

1890. 


( i 


^nifaraits  Wrm: 
John  Wilson  and  Son,  Cambridgb. 


M 


PREFACE. 


The  demand  for  the  communication  regarding  the  site  of  the  ancient 
city  of  NoRUMDEGA,  made  on  the  21st  of  November  last  to  the  American 
Geographical  Society  at  its  special  session  in  Watertown,  has  led  me  to 
anticipate,  in  some  degree,  the  publication  long  promised  of  the  results 
which  the  study  of  the  interesting  problem  of  the  lost  city  and  country 
has  yielded.  That  paper  is  in  press,  but  must  wait  for  a  time.  Mean- 
while I  have  thought  to  attach  a  few  of  its  illustrations  to  the  story 
recently  presented,  and  place  the  publication  where  it  may  be  found  by 
persons  interested;  and  further,  to  produce  the  paper,  without  the  illus- 
trations, in  a  less  expensive  form. 

E.  N.  H. 

Cambridok,  Jan.  1,  1890. 


iTw»i>»i^CH5;'";r!-scs 


THE   DISCOYERY 


OF  THE 


ANCIENT    CITY    OF    NORUMBEGA. 


JuDGK  Dalt,  President  of  the  American  Geographical  Soeicti/ : 

It  is  now  nearly  five  years  since  I  discovered  on  the  banks  of  Charles 
River  the  site  of  Fort  Norumbega,  occupied  for  a  time  by  the  Bretons  some 
four  hundred  years  ago,  and  as  many  years  earlier  still  built  and  occu- 
pied as  the  seat  of  extensive  fisheries  and  a  settlement  by  the  Northmen. 
It  is  nearly  as  long  since  that  discovery  was  the  subject  of  a  communica- 
tion which  I  had  the  honor  to  address  to  you,  in  your  official  capacity,  on 
the  first  of  March,  1885,  which  coirnnunication  was  published  in  the  October 
Bulletin  of  the  American  Geographical  Society  of  the  same  year. 

I  have  to-day  the  honor  of  announcing  to  you  the  discovery  of  Vinland, 
including  the  Landfall  of  Leif  Erikson  and  the  Site  of  his  Houses.  I  have 
also  tc  announce  to  you  the  discovery  of  the  site  of  the  ancient  City  of 
Norumbega. 

To  perpetuate  the  date  of  these  accessions  to  geography,  a  Tower  has 
been  set  up  at  the  site  of  Fort  Norumbega,  where  I  first  found  remains 
of  the  work  of  the  Northmen. 

It  had  been  proposed  to  accompany  the  unveiling  of  the  Tablet  on 
the  Tower  just  completed  with  a  summary  account  of  the  way  by  which 


ft 


G  DISCOVERY  OF  THE  ANCIENT  CITY  OF  NOUUMUEGA. 

I  had  been  conducted  to  my  later  discovery,  tc^rctlicr  with  other  exer- 
cises appropriate  to  tlie  occasion,  —  inehiding  a  Poem  rehearsing  the  story 
of  the  Vinhind  Sagas,  and  music  contributed  by  our  Scandinavian  friends 
and  by  a  party  of  ladies  from  Norutnbega  Hall  of  VVellesley  College,  so 
called  in  honor  of  the  discovery  which  was  counnunicated  to  the  public 
at  about  the  time  the  corner-stone  of  the  Hall  was  laid.  But  the  lateness 
of  the  season  has  made  the  outdoor  gathering  impracticable,  and  an 
invitation  has  been  accepted  to  meet  in  this  hall. 

As  the  Geographical  Society  has  consented  to  give  the  occasion  the 
honor  of  its  ofhcial  presence  as  at  a  special  meeting  convened  to  receive  the 
announcement  of  the  discoveries,  I  ask  permission  to  lay  before  you  copies 
of  the  maps,  ancient  and  modern,  charts,  sketches,  photographs,  drawings, 
manuscripts,  original  plans  and  surveys,  which  I  have  gathered  for  the  study 
of  the  problems  of  Vinland  and  Norumbega  and  for  the  purpose  of  illus- 
trating the  detailed  papers  now  in  press,  with  iha  request  that  they  be 
regarded  as  an  earnest  of  the  later  presentation  of  the  results  of  my  work, 
in  print,  to  the  Society. 

I  have  to  ask  your  further  permission  to  present  here  and  now  a  sum- 
mary of  the  course  of  my  more  recent  investigation,  which  has  resulted  in 
the  discovery  of  the  site  of  the  City  of  Norumbega. 


JUDGE    DALY'S    REPLY. 

Professor  Horsford,  —  Allow  me  to  say,  on  behalf  of  myself  and 
colleagues,  that  it  affords  us  great  pleasure  to  congratulate  you  on  your 
discovery.  When  you  made  your  communication  five  years  ago  to  the 
American  Geographical  Society,  I  was  inclined  to  think  that  the  facts 
then   presented   created   a   strong  probability   that   the   locality   indicated 


DISCOVERY  OF  THE  ANCIENT  CITY  OF  NORUMBKGA. 


by  you  was  in  the  region  where  the  Northmen  settled  in  this  country ; 
and  tlio  furtlicr  and  more  extensive  researches  you  have  since  made  con- 
firm  that  concluHion.      It   is   especially   interesting  at   this   period,   when 
wo   are   preparing    to    celebrate   the   lour   hundredth   anniversary   of    the 
discovery  of  this  continent  by  Columbus,  that  the  facts  you  have  ascer- 
tained should  be  brought  to  light  in  connection  with  this  earlier  discovery 
of  America.     We  have    hitherto  but  inadequately  appreciated   the  North- 
men as  a  race,  —  their  adventurous  spirit,  their  capacity,  and  the  degree  of 
civilization  to  which  they  had  attained  in  an  age  when  Europe  was  but 
emerging  from   the  darkness   that  had   enveloped  it  for   many  centuries. 
Trof.  A.  II.  Siiyce,  the  learned  Assyrian   scholar,  in   a   recent   paper  has 
declared,  and   given  his   reasons  for,   his  belief  that   the   primitive   home 
of  the  Aryans  —  the  central  point  of  the  departure  or  migration  of  that 
great  civilizing   race   that  at  a  very  early  period  spread  over  the  whole 
of  Persia  and  India,  and  to  the  westward  over  the  whole  of  Europe  and 
America — was  not,  as  has  hitherto  been  supposed,  the  country  lying  on 
the  slopes  of  the  mountains  of  the  Hindoo  Kush,  between  the  head-waters 
of  the   rivers  Saxartes  and  the  Oxus,   but  was  some  place  in   the  south- 
eastern part  of  Scandinavia;  which    would  make  the  Northmen   itte  pro- 
genitors  of  the  Greeks,  the  Romans,  and,  with  the  exception   of  one  or 
two   races,   of  all   the   nations   of   modern    Europe;    which,  if   further   re- 
searches  should   establish  to   be   the  fact,  would  make  tLem  the  greatest 
race  in  the  history  of  mankind. 

Du  Chaillu,  in  his  recent  work  on  the  Viking  Age  and  the  Ancestors 
of  the  English-speaking  People,  —  a  people  now  so  widely  distributed  over 
the  surface  of  the  glol)0,  —  refers  to  those  countries  in  the  north  of  Europe 
from  which  the  Northmen  came  as  the  birthplace  of  a  new  epoch  in  the 
history  of  mankind.  All  this  is  very  interesting  in  connection  with  what 
is  now  generally  admitted,  —  that  America  was  discovered  by  the  Northmen 


! 


i'JLk^i 


-;>i«!g&-; 


8 


DISCOVEUY  OF  THE  ANCIENT  CITY  OF  NOUUMHEOA. 


five  centuries  before  the  arrival  of  Columbiis,  and  that  for  a  considerable 
period  thereafter  they  maintuined  a  aettlenient  upon  our  northeastern 
coast,  and  V  nt  up  during  that  time  an  intercourse  with  the  niotlier 
country. 

It  remains  only  in  conclusion,  Sir,  that  I  should  express  my  high 
appreciation  of  your  labors  and  of  the  result  that  has  followed  them,  and 
of  your  liberality  in  the  lofty,  characteristic,  and  imposing  Tower  that  you 
have  caused  to  be  erected,  to  mark  one  of  the  places  where  the  Northmen 
dwelt,  and  to  commemorate  these  discoveries. 


STORY  OF  TnE  DISCOVERY  OF  NORUMBEGA. 


As  we  all  know,  there  have  been  before  the  world  for  many  Bcores  of 
years,  in  some  instances  for  as  many  centuries,  certain  grand  geographical 
problems,  challenging  the  spirit  of  research,  the  love  of  adventure,  or  the 
passion  for  discovery  or  conquest.  They  are  such  as  these:  Where  was 
Atalautis?  Where  was  the  Ultima  Thule  ?  What  is  there  at  the  North 
Pole  ?  Was  there  a  Northwest  Passage  ?  Where  were  the  Seven  Cities  ? 
Where  were  the  El  Dorado  of  Raleigh,  and  the  Landfalls  of  Leif  Erik- 
eon,  of  Columbus,  of  John  Cabot,  of  Verrazano  ?  And  where  were 
Vinland   and    Norumbega  ? 

The  number  of  unsolved  problems  is  steadily  lessening.  The  last  two 
mentioned  are  soon,  with  your  consent,  Mr.  President,  to  be  withdrawn  from 
the  colunm.  I  might,  perhaps,  say  something  concerning  the  other  themes 
that  have  been  named,  which  inight  interest  you,  and  properly  claim 
recognition  at  the  outset  of  a  story  of  geographical  discovery.  But  you 
will,  I  am  sure,  prefer  to  anything  else  I  might  say  here  and  to-day,  a 
plain  statement  of  the  reasons  for  the  faith  that  moved  mo  to  set  up  a  Tower 
in  Weston,  at  the  junction  of  Stony  Brook  with  the  Charles.  A  wish  that 
falls  in  so  wholly  with  my  sense  of  the  requirements  of  the  occasion  leaves 
me  no  alternative.  I  will  attempt  to  comply  with  it  as  best  I  may, 
asking  yoiu'  indulgence  for  the  repetitions  I  cannot  escape  in  telling  the 
story  of  how  I  found  the  seat  of  the  earliest  European  colony  in  the 
New  World. 

Most  who  hear  me   will   doubtless   connect   their   first   conception   of 
Norumbega   with   the   well-known   poem  of  Whittier.     You  will  not  have 


li 


I 


i 


-ii«^__  *, 


'■j^f.'H,  ;.•►-' 


10  DISCOVERY  OF  THE  ANCIENT  CITY  OF  NORUMBEGA. 

forgotten  how,  as  you  read  the  poem,  your  sympathies  went  out  to  tlie 
Christian  Knight,  faint   with   his  fruitless   quest  for   a   marvellous  city   of 

which  he  had  heard,  —  a  city  of  towers  and  spires   and  gilded  domes, 

and  a  fine  people,  rich  in  furs  and  pearls  and  precious  stones ;  nor  how, 
as  the  pomp  and  splendor  of  a  dying  October  day  fiidcd  from  his  sight,  and 
with  it,  in  his  rapt  vision,  the  possible  goal  of  his  hopes,  he  exclaimed, 
almost  in  his  latest  breatli,  — 

"  I  fain  would  look,  before  I  die. 
On  Norumbega's  walls." ' 

I  have  recently  received  the  following  letter  from  Mr.  Whittier  : 

Amesbury,  Oct.  30,  1889. 

Dear  Friend,  —  That  adventurous  Scandinavians  visited  New  England 
and  attempted  a  settlement  here  hundreds  of  years  before  Columbus,  is  no 
longer  a  matter  of  doubt.  I  had  supposed  that  the  filmed  city  of  Norura- 
bega  was  on  the  Penobscot,  when  I  wrote  my  poem  some  years  ago ;  but  I 
am  glad  to  think  of  it  as  on  the  Charles,  in  our  own  Massachusetts.  Thy 
discovery  of  traces  of  that  early  settlement  at  the  mouth  of  Stony  Brook  and 
at  "Watertown  is  a  matter  of  great  archjBological  interest,  and  the  memorial 
Tower  and  Tablet  may  well  emphasize  the  importance  of  that  discovery. 

Regretting  that  I  am  unable  to  witness  the  unveiling  of  the  Tablet, 
I  am 

Very  truly  thy  friend,  John  G.  Whittier. 

You  may  have  heard  of  Roberval,  a  French  admiral,  as  the  Lord  of 
Norumbega ;  or  you  may  remember  Milton's  reference  in  "  Paradise  Lost " 
to   the  "icy   blasts   from    the  north  of   Norumbega;"    or  you   may  have 

1  Tlio  poem  as  published  was  preceded  by  a  paragraph  which  read  as  follows  :  "  Norumbega  is 
the  name  given  by  early  French  explorers  to  a  fabulous  countrj-  south  of  Capo  Rreton,  first  discovered 
by  Verrazano  in  l'y2l.  It  was  supposed  to  have  a  magnificent  city  of  the  same  name  on  a  great  river, 
probably  the  Penobccot.  The  site  of  this  barbaric  city  is  laid  down  on  a  map  published  at  Antwerp 
in  1570.  In  1G04  Champlain  sailed  in  search  of  the  northern  Eldorado,  twenty-two  leagues  up  the 
Penobscot  from  the  Isle  Haute.  lie  snpixised  thq  river  to  be  that  of  Norumbega,  but  wisely  came  to 
the  conclusion  that  those  travellers  who  told  of  the  great  city  had  never  seen  it.  He  s.iw  no  eridences 
of  anything  like  civilization,  but  mentions  the  finding  of  a  cross,  very  old  and  mossy,  in  the  woods." 


DISCOVERY   OF   THE   ANCIENT  CITY   OF   NORUMHEGA. 


11 


read  of  Norumbega,  the  "Lost  City  of  New  England,"  by  the  Rev.  Dr. 
De  Costa;  or  you  may  recall  that  about  four  years  ago  there  was  some- 
thing in  the  local  papers  about  the  Landfall  of  John  Cabot  in  1497,  and 
the  site  of  Norumbega. 

Much  of  what  I  have  recalled  to  you  referred  to  the  region  not  re- 
mote from  our  own.  The  old  fort  at  the  foot  of  the  Tower  concealed 
within  its  walls  the  entrance  to  the  pathway  that  led  to  the  desert's  secret, 
which  the  Norman  Knight  sought  for  in  vain.  The  secret  was  won  only 
after  protracted  siege.  It  was  a  most  fascinating  bit  of  conquest ;  it  had 
the  charm  that  gathers  about  the  finding  of  long-lost  treasure,  something 
of  the  rapture  that  comes  with  the  witnessed  fulfilment  of  prophecy. 

The  story  of  Norumbega  was  old,  —  very  old  for  Massachusetts.     Its 

antiquity  may  have  furnished  reason  for  believing  the  story  to  have  had 

some  foundation  in  truth.     It  had  at  least  this :  An  Englishman  had  left  a 

record  of  having  seen  a  city  bearing  the  name  Norumbega,  and  the  city 

was  three  quarters  of  a  mile  long.     This  man  — David  Ingram,  a  sailor  — 

had  been  set  on  shore  by  Sir  John  Hawkins,  in  1568,  at  Tampico,  on  the 

Gulf  of  Mexico,  with  some  hundred  and  twenty  others,  in  stress  for  lack 

of  provisions.     He  had  wandered  all  the  way  across  the  country,  visiting 

many  large  Indian  towns,  and  coming  at  length,  in  1509,  to  the  banks  of 

Norumbega.     He  sailed  in  a  French  ship  from  the  Harbor  of  St.  Mary's 

(one  of  the  earlier  names  of  Boston  Bay),  a  few  hours  distant  from  the 

Norumbega   he  visited,    and   ultimately   got   back  to   England,    where  he 

again  met  and  was   kindly  received   by  Sir  John  Hawkins.      He  told  a 

story   that    surpassed    belief.      He   had   seen    monarchs   borne    on   golden 

chairs,  and  houses  with  pillars  of  crystal  and  silver.     He  had  visited  the 

dwelling  of  an  Indian  chief,  where  he  saw  a  quart  of  pcarh ;  and  when 

his  listeners  jnurmured,  he  capped  the  relation  with  the  statement   that 

in  one   cMef's  house  he  had  seen  a  peck  of  pcnrk.      He  was  brought  in 

audience  before  Sir  Humphrey  Gilbert,  the  kinsman  of  Sir  Walter  Raleigh. 

Thevet,  who  had  been  at  Norumbega,  on  the  banks  of  what  he  pronounced 

"  one  of  the  most  beautiful  rivers   in   all  the  world,"  and  who   had   not 


I 


If 


fct^Lv''  •►"^■■'"■•'.  .V* 


ii^^m^&ama^imimism^ 


12 


DISCOVERY   OF   THE   ANCIENT   CITY  OF  NORUMBEGA. 


improbably  been  at  the  mouth  of  Stony  Brook,  was  present,  and  confirmed 
Ingram  in  part.  Coronado's  experiences  in  New  Mexico,  1540,  enable  us 
to  confirm  him  in  more ;  and  the  brilliant  researches  of  Mr.  Gushing  of 
Zuui  memory  and  achievement,  and  the  collections  of  Professor  Putnam 
of  the  Peabody  Museum  at  Cambridge,  enable  us  to  comprehend  most  of 
the  remainder  of  his  relation.  There  were  pearls;  they  were  found  in 
fresh-water  clams  (Unios).  They  are  gathered  by  the  peck  at  the  West 
to-day;  the  Peabody  Museum  has  half  a  bushel  of  them  taken  from  an 
Ohio  mound  by  Professor  Putnam.  And  there  were  furs.  French  mer- 
chants (I  have  it  from  the  historian  of  New  France)  in  one  year  burned 
two  hundred  thousand  beaver  skins  to  keep  the  price  np.  These  furs  came 
from  the  land  of  the  Bretons,  —  from  here.  And  there  were  precious 
stones,  —  turquoise  and  onyx  and  garnet :  I  have  samples  of  them.  And 
there  were  ornaments  of  copper  and  silver  and  gold :  they  are  found  in 
Ohio  mounds  to-day.  The  pillars  of  quartz  crystal  and  columns  of  wood 
wrapped  with  thin  sheets  of  silver  and  even  of  gold,  I  can  credit,  from 
what  I  have  personally  seen  in  some  parts  of  Mexico.  On  festive  occa- 
sions such  sheets  were  displayed,  so  Mr.  Gushing  tells  us,  as  flags  are  with 
us  in  honor  of  a  day  or  of  an  event.  Much  of  what  Ingram  related  was 
what  he  had  seen.  Of  some  things  related  by  him  he  had  evidently  only 
heard :  the  stories  of  the  Incas  of  Peru  and  of  the  Montezumas  of  Mexico 
weie  among  them.     Ilis  hardships  had  brought  confusion  to  his  memory. 

Hakluyt  wrote  a  book  (carefully  edited  by  the  late  Dr.  Gharlcs  Deane, 
and  published  by  the  Maine  Historical  Society)  to  induce  England  to  under- 
take the  colonization  of  the  country  of  Norumbega.  Its  discovery  entered 
into  some  of  the  plans  for  penetrating  the  Northwest  Passage.  Sir  Hum- 
phrey Gilbert  lost  his  life  in  an  expedition  undertaken  in  part  to  find 
Norumbega.  I  have  many  ancient  maps  on  which  Norumbega  as  a  coun- 
try is  as  prominent  as  New  Spain  or  New  France  or  Virginia,  as  well 
as  many  others  having  devices  indicating  a  city  against  the  name  of 
Norumbega,  subordinate  to  the  name  of  Norumbega  as  a  province. 

All  these  belong  to  the   class  of  old  recorded  stories ;  mobt  of  them 


! 


DISCOVERY  OF   THE  ANCIENT   CITY  OF  NORUMBEGA. 


18 


were  in  print  before  the  landing  of  the  Pilgrims.  One  could  not  help 
thinking  that  they  must  have  some  foundation  in  truth;  the  alternative 
involved  too  many  conspirators,  of  different  nationalities. 

Champlain  at  the  opening  of  the  seventeenth  century  came,  under 
Admiral  Dc  Monts,  to  our  coast,  and  spent  a  good  portion  of  three  years 
exploring  the  bays  and  headlands  and  islands  from  Cape  Cod  to  the  Bay 
of  Fundy,  and  studying  the  people  and  the  products  of  the  soil.  The 
literature  of  geography  was  familiar  to  him.  He  tried  to  find  Norumbega. 
He  felt  that  somewhere  there  might  be  found  the  remains  of  a  city.  He 
went  many  leagues  up  the  Penobscot  from  its  mouth,  but  found  nothing. 
He  left  the  name  on  his  map  in  the  region  where  he  sought  for  the  city, 
about  the  mouth  of  the  great  river,  but  recorded  his  conviction  that  those 
who  described  it  had  not  seen  it.  This  learned  and  conscientious  explorer 
justly  commanded  confidence  wherever  his  publications  were  read.  His 
readers  felt  his  doubts.  Lescarbot  became  merry  over  what  he  thought  the 
delusion.  Still,  Cupt.  John  Smith  hoped  to  find  the  city  or  country ;  and 
for  a  long  time,  down  nearly  to  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century,  the 
name  of  Norumbega  appeared  on  Dutch  maps.  It  appeared  even  on  occa- 
sional maps  of  the  eighteenth  century.  But  at  length  it  was  to  be  found 
only  in  ancient  history  or  geography,  and  in  the  name  of  a  noble  Hall 
set  up  by  the  public-spirited  citizens  of  Bangor. 

Let  us  look  a  little  further  at  the  foundation  of  the  old  story;  we  shall, 
after  all,  find  it  quite  substantial. 

Verrazano,  in  1524,  came  up  to  the  angle  of  the  Charles  at  Cambridge 
City  Cemetery,  near  the  remains  of  the  then  still  standing  Norman  Villa, 
on  Maiollo's  map,  which  seems  to  have  occupied  the  site  of  Leifs  houses. 
He  found  and  left  us  the  name  Norumbega  in  oranbeja,  —  the  initial  N 
accidentally  obliterated  from  the  map,  and  the  m  of  the  second  syllable 
replaced  by  Ji,  as  given  on  his  brother's  map,  — near  the  ancient  St.  John's 
Harbor,  our  modern  Gloucester.  Not  far  from  Cape  Ann,  on  the  local 
map  of  Essex  County  of  to-day,  we  have  Norman's  0,  uniformly  called 
Norman's    Woe,   and  also   Norman's  Cove,   of  palpable   Norse   derivation. 


V._-,  -.. 


^^/.^r'i^L 


^J 


i 


14 


DISCOVEUY  OP  THE  ANCIENT  CITY  OF  NORUMBEGA. 


Thus  we  have  from  an  early  date  evidences  that  Northmen  have  been  on 
our  coast.^ 

A  little  later  Parmentier,  in  1539,  found  the  name  Norurabega  applied 
to  a  land  lying  southvvest-a-quarterwest  from  Cape  Breton.  Allefousce 
under  Kobervul,  in  1543,  determined  the  fact  of  there  being  two  Cape 
Bretons  (the  source  and  the  explanation  of  any  number  of  mistakes  in 
cartography),  of  which  the  more  southern,  referred  to  by  Parmentier,  was 
in  the  forty-third  degree,  and  identical  with  Cape  Ann.  Within  the  limits 
of  this  forty-third  degree  was  a  river,  at  the  moutli  of  which,  according 
to  AUefonsce,  were  many  rocks  and  islands  (Minofs  Lodge,  Cohasset  rocks, 
the  Lizard,  the  Roaring  Bulls,  the  Graves,  etc.),  up  which  river,  as  AUefonsce 
estimated,  Jlfteen  leagues  from  the  mouth,  was  a  city  ivhich  is  called  Norum- 
Icgue.  "  Tliere  was,"  he  said,  " a  Jine  people  "  at  Ihe  city;  "  and  they  had 
furs  of  many  animals,  and  loore  mantles  of  marten  skins." 

AUefonsce,  a  pilot  by  profession,  has  never  been  doubted.  On  him, 
more  than  on  any  one  else,  rest  the  identity  of  one  of  the  Cape  Bretons 
witli  Cape  Ann,  and  the  fact  of  there  being  a  river,  with  a  city  on  its 
banks,  both  bearing  the  name  Norumboga,  between  Cape  Ann  and  Cape 
Cod.  I  procured  from  the  Bibllothfique  Nationale  a  photographic  coi)y  of 
the  original  pen-made  map,  and  of  manuscripts  of  AUefonsce,  that  I  might 
consult  the  original.  There  is  no  room  whatever  for  question  that  a  few 
leagues  up  a  river  having  many  rocks  and  islands  at  its  mouth,  in  the  forty- 
third  degree,  there  was  in  1543  a  fine  city  called  Norumbegue.  In  proof 
of  this  I  might  quote  many  authorities,  if  time  permitted.^ 

Wytflict,  in  1597,  in  an  augment  to  Ptolemy,  says:  "  Noromboga,  a 
beautiful  city,  and  a  grand  river  are  well  known."  He  gives  on  his  map 
a  picaire  of  a  settlement,  or  villa,  at  the  junction  of  two  streams,  one  of 
which  is  the  Rio  Grande.  Here,  as  we  shall  see  later,  was  a  great  fishery, 
and  of  course  dwellings  and  appurtenances   to    domestic    life   for    persons 

'  Weliavc  other  names  of  Norse  deriv.ition  in  Massachusetts;  as  for  example, Nanset,  Naumkeacr 
Naumlx'.ik,  Namskaket,  and  Amoskcag. 

»  Among  them  are  I'tolcmy,  Uamusio,  Mercator,  Lok,  Maginn,  Plancio,  and  Solis. 


DISCOVERY  OF  THE  ANCIENT  CITY  OF  NORUMBEGA. 


15 


eno-ao-ed  in  the  industry.  I  have  framed  into  the  Tower  the  stone  mortar 
in  use  at  the  settlement.  Wytfliet  on  his  map  had  confounded  the  hum- 
bler settlement  with  the  city.     There  had  been  some  misapprehension. 

Thevet  in  his  text  places  "  Fort  Norombegue  "  at  the  point  where  stands 
the  Tower,  and  where  Wytfliet  placed  the  city,— at  the  junction  of  two 
streams ;  and  so  the  two  together  led  me  into  temporary  misapprehension. 
The  fort  was  occupied  in  Thevet's  time  as  a  trading-post  by  the  Breton 
French.  To  them  was  ascribed  the  construction  of  the  fort.  Thevet  says 
further :  "  To  the  north  of  Virginia  is  Norumbega,  which  is  well  known  as 
a  beautiful  city,  and  a  great  river ;  still  one  cannot  find  whence  its  name 
is  derived,  for  the  natives  call  it  Agguncia.^  At  the  entrance  of  the  river 
there  is  an  island  very  convenient  for  the  fishery."  lie  describes  the  fort 
as  surrounded  by  fresh  water  and  at  the  junction  of  two  streams.  The 
City  of  Nonnnheija  on  his  map  was  lower  down  the  river.^  Tlie  French 
who  occupied  the  fort  called  it  Fort  Norombegue.  It  was  surrounded  both 
by  a  ditch  and  a  stockade.     The  ditch  remains. 

It  was  largely  what  Allcfonsce  (1543)  and  Thevet  (1556),  who  were  on 
our  coast  as  explorers,  wrote,  and  what  was  pictured  on  Wytfiiet's  map, 
that  led  to  my  finding  the  fort.  When  1  had  deduced  from  the  literature 
of  geography  that  the  fort  was  at  the  mouth  of  Stony  Brook,  I  drove  directly 
there,  and  found  it  on  my  first  visit. 

But  I  early  found,  besides  the  fort,  the  evidences,  long  unintelligible  to 
me,  of  a  great  industry  (to  which  I  have  alluded),  involving,  among  other 
things,  graded  areas  some  four  acres  in  extent,  paved  with  field  bowlders. 
It  was  a  most  extraordinary  display,  to  which  I  may  refer  later. 

As  already  remarked,  after  Champlain,  — known,  as  he  was,  as  a  most 
competent  explorer  and  conscientious  man,  whose  itinerary  was  most  full  and 
clear  and  painstaking,  and  whose  maps  were  without  precedent  for  palpable 
evidences  of  care,  —  after  Champlain  and  the  publication  of  his  unsuccessful 

>  Iroquois  for  "  head,"  — which  applies  to  a  great  rock  in  tlie  margin  of  tlie  pavement  of  the 
fisheries),  and  now  at  one  end  of  the  reservoir  d.im. 

a  The  settlement  at  the  junction  o£  tliu  two  streams,  and  the  site  of  tlie  city  lower  down  are  given 
on  the  maps  of  both  Thevet  and  Mercator 


:  ^^m 


M"i 


^^ 


^  fc  »^ 


<*'rf- 


iVte/4 


n 


16 


DISCOVERY  OF  THE  AXCIENT  CITY  OF  NOUUMBECrA. 


exploration  of  the  Penobscot,  belief  in  the  existence  of  the  City  of  No- 
rumbeg'a  came  to  be  generally  less  confident,  and  finally,  as  Dr.  Palfrey's 
"  History  "  shows,  to  be  practically  abandoned. 

To  one  modern  writer  more  than  to  any  other  we  are  indebted  for  keep- 
ing the  story  of  Norumbega  alive.  Rev.  Dr.  De  Costa,  at  that  time  editor  of 
the  "  American  Magazine  of  History,"  wrote  and  published  a  few  years  ago 
the  most  fascinating  story  of  the  "  Lost  City  of  New  England."  lie  wrote 
and  printed  several  papers,  gathering  together  for  preservation  the  scattered 
fragments  of  legends  and  history  bearing  on  the  subject.  His  conviction, 
however,  like  that  of  Champlain  and  all  other  personal  explorers,  except 
Allefonsce  and  Thevet,  was  that  if  the  ruins  of  the  city  were  ever  to  be 
anywhere  found,  they  would  be  on  the  Penobscot,  where  our  grand  old 
Poet  placed  it. 

Yet  every  rood  of  the  Penobscot  to  its  extreme  source  has  been  scoured 
in  the  search,  and  no  trace  of  the  remains  of  a  city  has  been  found.  There 
still  exist  on  that  noble  river  evidences  of  what  the  story  grew  fiom  which 
was  told  to  Champlain,  —  among  them  the  name  of  Nolambeghe,  preserved 
or  known  to  the  Indians  of  to-day  (Votromille),  and  the  name  Baya  del 
Loreme  on  many  ancient  maps,  as  well  as  other  names  of  Norse  derivation 
on  local  maps  of  Maine  ;  but  time  will  not  permit  us  to  pursue  them. 

As  the  lost  city  was  not  on  the  Penobscot,  and  as  it  was  not  thought  pos- 
sible that  it  could  exist  elsewhere,  the  search  was  at  last  given  up.  So 
Norumbega  was  lost.  In  view  of  the  great  interests  involved,  one  might 
almost  wish — say  you?  —  that  it  could  have  remained  lost  for  a  few 
years  longer. 

In  my  judgment,  however,  if  it  were  possible  to-day  to  prove  that  the 
Phoenicians  visited  and  long  occupied  parts  of  this  country,  or  that  this 
country  was  the  Atalantis  of  Pliny  and  Solon,  —  either  or  both  of  them 
would  dim,  by  the  measure  of  the  faintest  Indian-summer  haze  only,  the 
transcendent  glory  of  the  life-work  of  Columbus. 

But  there  was  another  country  lost,  —  lost  from  a  still  earlier  period. 
This  was  Vinland.     Or  it  may  perhaps  more  correctly  be  said  that  it  is  only 


./ 


u       / 


1   ^ 

-4 


RIVER  FLOWING  THROUGH  A  LAKE 
INTO  THE  SEA' 

VINLAND  OP  THE  NORTHMEN 

(•^ijiiecl  tlj^flftr  Ii^sl.riicTliorji  fey 

Geo.  DaVis,  Civil  Er^^iijeer. 


»   /■>  n 


Scale  of  fviiies. 


*  =  Jiyt  Of  Lrif'6  floJsE^. 


CI  51  < 


-^ 
# 


^-'^'^ 


)>■•: 


A 


^ 


-^ 


#;>  '^^ 


«1    /<) 


0     H    7    >l 


y 


(     I     f    / 


(.()  HV  >*  «  i:  v 


rJ  A\/ 


,,ttlMil.lt,ii  .  .i'.«.'L8BO"'»' 


y 


I. 


I: 


/ 


X 


\- 


T     .1 


\ 


M    A     L      DEN 


ifitaMMMi 


Humyrt  Pr'h  tinoCo  Boarw 


■NMB 


^n*>  CI  Y  II 


Itl 


DISCOVERY  OF   THE   ANCIENT  CITY  OF  NOUUMUEOA. 


17 


recently  tlmt  it  hnn  been  diHCOvcrod  un.l  dotnonstr.ite.l  that  there  had  ccr- 
tainly  been  a  country  hereabout  to  which  the  Northmen  came,  nine  hundred 

^'"doT'ou  anticipate  me  by  exdaiming  that  Vinland  and  Norumbcga  are 

identical?  „    ,  ,.  .  ^.        „ 

But  between  such  conclusion  and  the  date  of  the  earlier  conviction  of 
what  miKht  bo  found  by  research  lay  four  years  of  almost  constant  study 
nnd    norsonal   exploration,   with   the    co-operation    of    the    engineer    and 
drau.ditsman  an<l   photographer  at  almost  every  Btep.      I  only  felt  that  I 
saw  the  end  ahnost  from  the  beginning,  and  lodged  a  caveat  four  years  ago 
in  connection  with  the  Norse  name  of  Cape  Cod,-Kjalarnes,  -and  waited 
I  repeated  my  conviction  more  than  once  in  my  mldress  at  the  unveiling  of 
the  statue  to  Leif  in  Boston  two  years  ago.     And  if  I  tell  you  now  that 
I  have  found  the  ancient  city  of  Nonunboga,  as  well  as  the  /.•/  and  the  n.cr 
and  the  country  of  Norumboga,  and  learned  somewhat  of  their  marvellous 

history, -it  will,  1  hope,  ''^^Ip  ^<^  «'^°  -^'""  ^"^"''^"'^  '"  ^^'"''  ''''^'  '"'  '" 
unfoUiin.'  of  a  relation  which  I  cannot  much  shorten,  much  less  omit. 

Lot  me  tell  you  of  a  little  prediction  that  I  made  at  a  certam  early  stage 
of  my  research,  which,  if  my  reasoning  from  data  discovere.l  were  correct, 
must  be  realized,  and  which  may  help  to  give  you  patience  as  well  as  cour- 
acre      It  was  the  test  of  the  trustworthiness  of  my  method  of  research.     1 
said'  to  myself  and  to  my  household :    "  If  T  am  correct,  every  tributary 
to  the  Charles  will  be  found  to  have,  or  to  have  had,  a  dam  and  a  pond, 
or  their  equivalent,  at  or  near  its  mouth  or  along  its  course."      That  was 
,ny  prophecy.      One  may  study  its  fulfilment  on  either  side  of  the  river 
from  its  mouth  to  its  source,  at  one's  leisure.     It  was  long  after  this  pre- 
diction  that  I  found  its  verification  at  every  point  I  examined,  even  as  iar 
as  fiftv  miles  from  its  mouth  along  the  Charles,  in  MiUis;  and,  f\irther  still 
in  Ilolliston.     The  reasoning  that  led  up  to  necessary  dams  and  ponds  at 
or  near  the  mouths  of  the  tributaries  led  with  like  force  to  a  great  dam  on 
the  Charles  itself;  and  that  is  also  open  to  your  study. 

On  the  Tablet  of  the  Tower  one  may  read  that  Norumbega  was  the  name 


w 


mmi0''t*s^. 


iiMn 


18 


DISCOVEUY  OF  THE   ANCIENT  CITY  OF  NOUUMnEGA. 


of  a  fort  nt  the  hnno  of  the  Tower,  of  tlio  river  llowinp  past  im,  of  a  city 
on  it«  banks,  and  of  a  country  that  rcachus  from  Lon;^  Ishiml  Si>uii<l  to  tlio 
St.  Lawrence  ;  and  that  unuiiHtakablo  renuuns  of  tlio  peoplu  who  oecupicd 
the  country  are  strewn  throughout  this  vast  region.  And  to  bo  still  more 
specific,  I  niny  say  there  is  not  a  scpiare  mile  of  the  bosin  of  the  Charles 
that  does  not  contain  incontestable  meiiiorialH  of  these  people,  that  will  pres- 
eiitly  be  as  obvious  to  others  a.s  they  now  are  to  me. 

Shall  I  tell  you  at  the  outset  why  this  has  not  boon  known  before  ?  It 
was  a  secret  that,  among  other  things,  lay  hidden  in  the  signification  of  two 
or  three  Algonquin  roots. 

You  are  all  familiar  with  the  fact  that  the  organs  of  speech  of  different 
peoples  differ  more  or  less.  The  German  has  ditliculty  with  our  pronuncia- 
tion, and  we  with  the  German ;  the  Hawaiian  language,  like  the  Italian,  is 
marked  by  the  frequent  recurrence  of  vowels ;  some  persons  lisp  ;  vi  and 
n  are  sometimes  confounded  with  each  other,  as  b  and  ])  are,  and,  as  the 
Chinese  illustrate  to  us,  I  and  r;  so  too  h  and  v,  u  and  iv,  arc  intercliange- 
able.'  The  early  settlers  said  Marvill  Head  where  we  say  Marble  Head." 
The  Dutch  have  difTiculty  with  the  English  h.  v,  and  to. 

Lonf  ago — he  has  been  dead  a  hundred  years — a  Moravian  mission- 
ary, Zeisberger,  a  German,  came  to  this  country,  and  noted  a  peculiarity  in 
Algonquin  speech.  Heckewelder,  another  German,  remarked  the  same 
thing.  Du  Ponceau,  a  Frenchman,  observed  it.  This  peculiarity  was  that 
the  Indians  of  the  tribes  of  the  Algonquin  family,  which  prevailed  through- 
out New  England,  could  not,  —  I  bog  you  specially  to  remark  it,— could 
not  utter  tlio  sound  of  h  without  prefixing  to  it  the  sound  of  m ;  so  that 
in  uttering  hi,  the  word  that  means  "  water,"  the  Indians  said  vihi,  —  ]mt 
as  the  Latins,  possibly  preserving  the  same  root  rnhi  (autochthonous  of 
old),  said  imhibn,  "to  imbibe  or  drink  ;"  jast  as  the  Greek  sailors  who 
come  to  our  capital  city  speak  of  coming  to  rtiBoston ;  just  as  in  Central 

»  Rog(  r  WilH.ims  imticrd  among  the  tritms  of  Indians,  even  in  i  lacps  within  forty  miles  square  of 
area,  that  /,  n,  and  r  were  dialeotic  equivalents  in  the  Indian  name  o£  "  dog." 
'  See  Wood's  New  England's  Prospect. 


DI8C0VKUV  OF  THE  ANCIENT  CITY  OF  NOHl'MnEOA. 


19 


and  South  Atncrica  and  in  great  portionH  of  Africa  ono  may  find  to-day 
in  niiiDcs  of  purHons  and  phiooH  b  precuilod  by  m.  (Suo  Stanley's  naincH, 
und  r)ii  (Jliaillit's  and  ISrintun'M,  and  naniCH  in  niiHHionary  rccurdH.) 

Many  lanidred  years  ago  the  country  we  call  Norway  was  called  Nor- 
begia'  and  Norboga,"  which  are  the  Hanie  philologically  —  om  we  have  just 
seen — as  Noruega,  or  Norvega,  or  Norwega ;  the  b  is  the  equivalent  of  u, 
or  V,  or  ir. 

The  people  of  Norway  settling  in  a  newly  diHcovcrcd  country  claimed 
the  sovereignty  of  that  country.  Vinland  belonged  to  Norway,  —  that 
is,  Norbega.  But  the  Indians  among  whom  the  Norwegians  came,  could 
not,  as  we  have  seen,  utter  the  sound  of  li  without  putting  the  sound  of  m 
before  it.  They  could  not  readily  say  Norbcya,  but  said,  because  it  was 
easier  of  utterance,  Nor' inhega.  This  was  the  name  later  given  by  the 
natives  wherever  along  the  coast,  from  Cape  Cod  to  the  St.  Lawrence, 
explorcM-s  asked  the  name  of  the  country  occupied  l)y  the  Norwegians. 
In  answer  to  such  questions  the  natives  gave  the  name  that  hud  so  long 
before  been  conferred,  —  Normhcga.  This  name  seems  to  have  been  u.sed  in 
the  sense  of  "  l)elonging  to  Norway."  Portuguese,  Spanish,  Italian,  French, 
Dutch,  and  Pjiiglish  navigators  coming  to  our  .shores  spelled  the  name  Xur' inbign 
variously.  So  we  had  Xnnnuhcga ;  we  had  the  «  in  it  replaced  by  o,  a,  e, 
and  /;  and  wo  had  fxya  replaced  by  bcffiic  and  dec  and  Ixtfffi,  etc.  Chauiplain 
left  the  name  of  the  country  about  the  Penobscot  Xarunhcrt/ue.  On  one 
map  only  have  I  found  Xiiriiibct/a.  On  three  maps,  obviously  copies  of 
a  common  original,  I  have  found  at  the  same  point,  respectively,  Norvega, 
Noruega,  and  Norumbega.^  These  three  names  on  the  separate  maps  were 
all  alike  in  Nova  Francia  (New  France). 

Now,  in  1524,  after  the  Northmen  in  the  basin  of  the  Charles  had  moved 
northward,  pursuing  their  industries  along  the  coast,  some  naturally  becom- 
ing merged    in   the   Indian   people,  Verrazano,  the  Italian  explorer  under 

'  Socs  Hordono.  "  .See  Mac;iiin. 

•  Norvoga  wa.s  Norl)i'gi\,  as  Sovastoiwl  \v,is  Scbnatnpol.  or  as  Ilibero  w.%s  Uivoro  ;  iviid  Norlioffa 
bccamo  Nor'mbega,  as  Hoston  tn-cotnes  'mUoston.  Urotius  and  Forster  recognized  the  iwssible 
identity  of  Norwega  witli  Noruinboga. 


Vw..' 


[fy^ 


20 


DISCOVEUY  OF  THE  ANCIEN'T  CITY  OF  NORUMBEGA. 


Francis  I.  and  Madame  the  Regent  of  France,  came  here  and  saw  traces  of 
tho  fortncr  presence  of  the  Northmen.  There  is  recorded  on  his  maps 
(Maiollo'.s  and  that  of  his  brother  Ilieronynuis  Verrazano)  Norman's  Villa,' 
and  Anorobagea,  and  Oranbega.^  Allefonsce's  visit  was  later,  in  1543;  and  he 
found  the  city  and  river  of  Noronibeguc  in  the  forty-third  degree.  Thevet 
came  later  still,  and  found  in  the  same  degree — possibly,  it  may  be  suggested, 
in  part  by  relation  of  others  —  the  river  and  city,  and  also  ihe  fort,  of  No- 
rumbega.  These  navigators  and  discoverers  were  all  Frenchmen."  Breton 
French  traders  occupied  the  fort  when  Thevet  was  in  this  neighborhood. 
This  portion  of  Massacliusetts  liad  been  called  Francesca  and  Gallia  hy  Ver- 
razano, and  Terra  de  la  Franciscane  by  Allefon.sce.  This  was  the  earliest  New 
France,  —  Nova  Franoia,  —  the  name  which  Jacques  Cartier  in  15.31-1535 
extended  over  the  shores  of  the  St.  Lawrence,  the  story  of  which  we  have 
in  the  works  of  Dr.  Parkman.  The  Dauphin  map  (1542-1543)  confounded,  as 
Sebastian  Cabot's  of  1544  did,  the  southern  with  tlie  northern  Cape  Dreton, 
or  rather  fused  the  two  in  one.  It  was  Allefonsce,  the  pilot  of  Roberval, 
who  in  1543  left,  in  the  manuscript  to  which  I  have  referred,  the  record 
of  his  discovery  that  there  were  (lco  Caj)e  Bretons.  It  is  this  original  manu- 
script—  of  which  I  have  with  its  pen-made  maps  the  absolute  copy —  that 
has  determined  the  site  of  the  treasures  of  the  forty-third  degree. 

This  Allefonsce  mnnnscript  determined  our  Cape  Ann  to  he  the  southern  Cape 
Breton.  It  determined  the  river  Charles  to  be  tho  Norumbega.  That  is,  the 
river  Norumbega  was  in  the  forty-third  degree ;  it  was  a  tidal  river  ( Ver- 
razano and  Thorfinn).  '-It  is  at  its  mouth  full  of  islands  which  stretch  out 
ten  or  twelve  leagues  to  the  sea."  *  Of  such  a  tidal  river  there  is  hut  one  in 
the  fortv-third  degree. 

1  Xorm.iii  Villa  Ls  also  on  the  Ulpius  Globe  in  the  same  latitude. 

^  XornKin's  Woe  occupies  the  site  of,  or  is  ne.ir  to,  the  ( )r!inbec;.'V  of  Verraziino.  Not  f,ar  away 
wa.s  the  ilialectic  equivalent  Naamhoak  nf  .lolin  Smith,  and  its  near  fellow  of  Xaunikeag,  in  use  to-day, 
and  Namskakct  and  \moskeag,  already  mentioned  ;  of  close  kinship,  and  in  another  direction,  wcro 
Bogasto  and  .Tar.  Verrazano  records  the  luiu/d  villa  —  such  were  tho  houses  of  the  Northmen  — 
and  the  sweathouse,  or  sli,  as  it  is  preserved  in  Hoga-stf>,  in  the  town  of  Millis. 

*  Verrazano  wa.s  an  Italian  in  the  employ  of  the  French  Government. 

*  Allefonsce's  month  of  tlio  Charles  had  for  its  two  promontories  Cape  Ann  aud  CajK)  CoJ.  He 
estimates  its  width  at  "  above  forty  leagues." 


^ 


mm 


wm 


mmmmmmmm 


\> 


V 


DISCOVERY  OF  THE  ANCIENT  CITY  OF  NORUMBEGA. 


21 


On  the  niivps  of  which  I  spoke,  where,  at  the  same  point  and  given  aa  the 
alternative  names  of  this  city,  Norumbocja,  Norveya,  and  Norm<ja  are  found, 
and  where  Norvega  as  a  jxrovince  occurs,  there  is  also,  and  in  the  same  pre- 
cise latitude,  the  Norumbega  Rkcr.  This  was  the  llio  Grande  of  the  Portu- 
guese, the  Anguileine  of  Verrazano,  the  Misliaum  (Big  Eel)  of  the  Massachu- 
setts Indians,  and  the  Charles  of  Capt.  John  Smith.  Over  all,  in  larger  print, 
on  these  maps,  is  the  historic  name  of 

Nova  Fr.\.ncia. 

Of  this  New  France  Mr.  Bancroft,  our  great  historian,  say.=i:  "The  French 

DIPLOMATS    NEVER    FAILED    TO    ItEMEMBER    THAT    BoSTON    WAS    WITUIN    THE 
LIMITS    OF   THE    ORIGINAL   NeW    FrANCE." 

Here  was  the  original  New  Fr.\.nce. 

If  Boston  was  in  New  France  ;  and  if  the  river  Norumbega  ^ihc  Charies), 
and  the  city  of  Norumbega  and  the  fort  of  Norumbega,  on  the  banks  of  the 
diaries,  were  all  in  New  France  as  well  as  in  the  country  of  Norumbega, 
and  in  the  forty-third  degree,  —  then  we  cannot  be  in  doubt  as  to  where 
the  Northmen  came  nine  hundred  years  ago.  As  I  have  demonstrated  else- 
whore  that  Leif's  houses  were  farther  down  the  Charles,  we  cannot  doubt 
that  the  Vinland  of  Leif  was  near  the  city  of  the  Norumbega  of  history, 
tradition,  and  song.  So  eastern  Massachusetts  held  both  Yinland  and  the 
ancient  city  and  seaport  and  river  and  fort  of  Norumbega. 

It  is,  as  the  French  tell  us,  the  unexpected  that  happens.  I  found  my 
guide  to  the  city  in  a  single  paragraph  in  one  of  the  Sagas  of  Tliorfinu 
Karisefni,  which  appears,  by  an  oversight  of  the  .scribe  or  copyist  possibly, 
attaclied  to  the  story  of  Froydis.     Let  me  give  the  substance  of  it. 

Leif  had  built  houses  near  Gerry's  Landing,  and  called  the  country  Vin- 
land, and  returned  to  Greenland.  Thorwald  had  come  to  Leif's  houses,  had 
explored  the  Charies,  had  found  in  it  many  shallows  and  islands,  and  a  corn- 
shed  on  an  i.sland  far  to  the  west ;  had  consumed  a  summer  in  his  discoveries, 
and  returned  to  Leif's  houses  in  the  autumn.  In  attempting  exploration  at 
sea  he  had  been  wrecked  on  Cape  Cod,  had  repaired  his  ship  and  set  up  the 


ORTELIUS,    1570. 


I 


SOI./S.  /sat 


<3 


••Si> 


o 


rrtsUKt. 


\.ad.CAJUas. 


*^ 


BOTERO,    1603. 


"They  sailed  long  until  they  came  to  a  river,  which  flowed  from  the  land 


through  a  lalce  and  passed  into  the  sea." 


Thorflun's  Saga. 


New  pi!  lT!n  •^""7""^*^  "'^^-^y  ''-"'e-nbered  that  Boston  was  built  within  the  original  limits  of 
New  France"  (Bancrofts  MUCvry,  2d  edition,  p.  24). 


MMl 


22 


DISCOVERY   OF   TIIK   ANXIENT  CITY   OF   XOUUMIJEGA. 


old  keel  in  the  sand,  and  called  the  cape  Kjalarnes(Kecl  cape) ;  he  had  boon 
killed  in  battle  with  the  Indians,  and  buried  on  the  Gurnet.  Ills  crew  had 
returned  to  Greenland  to  be  succeeded  by  Thorfmn,  who  remained  three 
years  in  Vinland,  and  because  of  Indian  distrust  and  opposition  gave  up  the 
attempt  to  settle  the  country. 

Thorfmn  in  his  ricldy  laden  ship  had  returned  with  his  wife  Gudrid  and 
his  little  boy  Snorri  to  Greenland  and  to  Norway  ;  had  passed  the  winter  in 
the  society  of  the  Court  at  Nidaros,  the  residence  of  the  king,  not  far  from 
the  modern  Thronheim.  As  he  was  ready  to  take  his  departure  for  Iceland, 
his  future  home,  waiting  at  the  wharf  for  a  favoring  wind,  there  came  to 
the  ship  a  Bremen  merchant  who  wished  to  buy  his  hum-snotra.  TluM-finn 
did  not  care  to  part  with  it.  "  I  will  not  sell,"  said  he.  «  /  offer  you  a  pound 
of  gold  [Beamish  says,  a  half-mark  of  guhiy  said  the  Southerner.  '•  Knrl- 
sefni  [Thorfinn  Karlsofnil  thoinjht  tJiis  a  good  offer,  and  closed  the  hartjaln. 
lite  German  then  went  away  with  the  htsa-snotra.  But  Karlsefni  knew  not 
what  WOOD  icas  in  it !    It  icas  mosurr  from   Vinland ! " 

Beamish  estimated  a  half-mark  of  gold  at  £1G  sterling,  or  about  $80  of 
our  money  (and  much  more,  expressed  by  modern  values  of  service  or  pro- 
ducts of  labor).  What  a  sum  for  an  article  of  household  use,  the  chief  value 
of  wliioh  was  in  its  wood  !     What  could  mosurr  wood  be?     And  what  was  a 

husa-snotra  ? 

About  the  latter  there  has  been  endless  speculation.  Hum  obviously  was 
relatc<l  to  hmsc ;  Init  what  did  snotra  mean?  One  writer  thought  it  a 
l)osoin  ;  another,  a  broom-handle  ;  another,  a  bar  to  fasten  the  door  from 
within.  It  might  be  a  weathercock,  a  crown,  a  piece  of  decorative  carving 
in  wood.  None  were  satisfactory.  Professor  Vigfusson  —  the  late  Icelandic 
Professor  at  Oxford  — came  to  the  conviction  that,  it  was  an  ancient  Fin- 
nish word,  now  obsolete. 

The  '•'  Antiquitates  Americanoe "  had  been  translated  into  Danish  and 
Latin  by  Rafn,  and  most  Vinland  students  had  seen  the  Vinland  Sagas  either 
in  the  original  or  in  one  or  the  other  of  these  two  translations.  I  had  not  met 
a  reference,  in  connection  with  the  discussion  of  husa-snotra,  to  the  sununary 


DISCOVERY  OF  TlIK  ANCIENT  CITY  OF  NORUMBEGA.  23 

of  the  Vinland  Sagas  in  Peringskjold's  translation  of  the  Heimskringla  of 
Snorro  Sturleson  into  Swedish  and  Latin.  Might  there  not  be  anotlier  ren- 
dering in  Swedisli  ?  I  learned  of  a  copy  of  the  first  edition  of  Peringskjold's 
Heimskringla  of  1G97  in  Stockholm,  and  was  fortnnately  able  to  obtain  it. 
In  this,  husa-smtm  was  translated  icwj  in  Swedish ;  into  Latin  by  statera,  or 
statcra  %nca,  "  wooden  scales"  (scale-pans).  The  husa-snotm  had  possibly 
(probably)  been  wrought,  or  repaired  (at  least  the  scale-pans),  by  a  sailor  on 
his  home  voyage  from  Vinland,  and  presented  to  Thorfinn.  It  was  a  pair  of 
house-scales,  the  scale-pans  of  which  were  of  mosutr  wood}  The  husa-snotm 
was  the  equivalent  of  the  house  steelyard  for  weif/hlng. 

Here  is  the  significant  sentence  in  the  Saga  :  — 

"  Thorfinn  had  wood  felled  and  hewn  and  Irouffht  to  the  ship,  and  the  wood 
piled  on  the  cliff  to  dry."     (See  Cabot's  translation.) 
Let  us  study  it. 

It  vni!^  felled.     It  was  part  of  a  ffrown  tree. 

UxL'P"  hntnn    in  rpiTinvp  useless  woitrht. 

It  was  piled  on  the  cliff  to  dr>/.  Why  ?  Because  it  teas  wet.  It  had  been  in 
the  water.    It  had  been  cast  into  the  river,  or  a  tributary  to  it,  above  the  ship. 

It  had  been  Jloated  to  the  ship.  It  had  been  fished  out  and  carried  to  the 
clij^  by  hand. 

It  was  in  blocks  that  men  could  carry. 

It  had  been  piled  so  as  to  be  convenient  for  sliding  to  the  ship,  at 
the  base  of  the  bluff,  when  ready  to  receive  its  cargo. 

In  these  terms  of  analysis  I  found  what  led  to  the  discovery  of  the 
desert's  secret,  —  the  ancient  City  of  Norumbega.  I  saw  —  afar  off,  to  be 
sure  —  what  the  Norman  Knight  almost  saw  in  a  mirage  among  the  gor- 
geous clouds  that  sometimes  gather  about  the  setting  sun. 

My  study  was  at  last   rewarded.      I   had  delved  to  the  heart  of  the 

>  Scale  pans  of  bronze  are  found  in  Sweden,  of  the  bronze  age.     (Montelius,  p.  114.) 
»  Leif  also  ' '  hewed  the  cargo  of  wood  for  his  vessel." 


I> . 


24 


DISCOVERY  OF  THE  ANCIENT  CITY  OF  NORUMHEGA. 


problem.  As  I  look  back  upon  the  experience,  I  think  it  may  not  have 
been  altogether  a  playful  fiction  that  I  uttered  to  myself,  when  glancing 
down  the  viata  before  me  I  said,  "  I  have  not  only  reached  the  heart 
of  the  problem,  but  I  can  feel  its  boat." 

Miisur  wood,  as  I  will  presently  explain  to  you,  was  the  burrs  or  large 
warts  that  occasionally  grow  on  certain  trees,  more  frequently  Ibund  in 
primitive  forests,  —  as  oak  (one  variety  is  called  burr  oak),  l)irch,  hickory, 
maple,  ash.     (Mcisur  wood  =  Knorrujc  Ausxvuchs,  Old  German.) 

I  have  alreiidy  said  that  there  were  monuments  of  the  presence  of 
the  Northmen  on  every  square  mile  of  the  basin  of  the  Charles.  I  find 
I  must  at  once  tell  you  what  these  monuments  are. 

We  have  no  account  of  transportation  by  the  Northmen  except  by  water. 
The  miJsur  wood  gathered  liy  Thorfinn,  we  have  just  seen,  was  Jloatcd  to  the 
ship,  which  lay  in  the  Charles,  and  then  taken  from  the  water  to  be  piled  on 
a  clljj',  a  bliijr,  a  bank,  out  of  the  reach  of  high  tide,  to  dry.  "We  will  assume 
what  I  cannot  stop  now  to  dwell  on,  —  I  have  discussed  it  elsewhere  at 
length,  —  that  the  spot  where  this  occurred  in  Thorfinn's  experience  was 
at  or  near  Gerry's  Landing,  just  above  the  ancient  bluff  known  as  Symond's 
Hill,  by  the  river  (the  site  of  Leifs  houses),  near  the  City  Hospital.  That 
was  the  spot  where  a  great  industry  in  Vinland  began.  The  mfisur  blocks 
were  felled  and  hewn  at  first  along  the  neighboring  bluffs  on  the  Charles. 
At  the  base  of  these  bluffs  are  still  ditches,  or  canals,  into  which  the  blocks 
may  have  been  rolled,  and  along  which,  after  the  ditches  were  fdled  with 
the  water  at  high  tide,  the  blocks  wore  lloatcd  down  to  where  the  ship 
lay.  The  ship  was  the  nalhcrinci-placc.  The  Ijlocks  had  been  '•  brouf/ht  to 
the  ship."  Thej-  were  not  taken  on  board  immediately ;  but  removed  from 
the  water,  and  enrried  f>//  hand  and  jrilcd  on  a  cliff  to  dry.  When  the  imme- 
diate shores  of  the  river  had  been  exhausted  of  the  mfisur  wood,  the  shores 
of  the  tributaries  flowhig  into  the  river  became  the  field  of  activity,  and  the 
mosur  blocks  were  sent  floating  down  the  streams ;  and  where  the  streams 
were  remote  from  the  bases  of  the  slopes  on  either  side,  and  .sources  of  water 
were  at  hand,  canals,  or  nearly  level  troughs,  wore  dug  to  transport  the 


DISCOVERY  OF  THE  ANCIENT  CITY  OF  N()UU.MUK(iA. 


25 


blocks  to  the  Htroams,  and  ultimately  to  the  Charles.  We  now  sec  why 
(lams  and  ponds  were  necessary  at  the  mouths  of  the  streams,  to  prevent 
the  blocks  from  going  down  the  Charles  without  a  convoy,  and  out  to  sea 
to  be  lost.  Consider  as  an  example  the  pond  at  the  mouth  of  the  Cold- 
spring  Brook  opposite  Watertown.  1  call  its  artificial  wall  below  a  boom- 
ihini.  It  is  a  good  example.  Th're  is  another  striking  one  just  below 
Newton  Upper  Falls,  on  the  left  bank,  through  the  ridge.  The  volume 
of  water  of  the  stream  spread  out  against  the  dam  would  become,  on  the 
brow,  too  shallow  for  the  blocks  to  pass  over.  They  would  thus  be  saved 
as  logs  are,  by  a  boom  across  a  stream  down  which  they  are  floating. 

There  is  an  admirable  canal,  walled  on  one  side  for  a  thousand  feet,  along 
the  west  bank  of  Stony  Brook,  in  the  woods  above  the  Fitchburg  Railroad 
Crossing  between  Waltham  and  Weston.  The  Cheesecake  Brook  is  another, 
and  Coldspring  Brook  another.  There  is  an  interesting  dry  canal  near  Mur- 
ray Street,  not  far  from  Newtonville.  It  may  be  seen  from  the  railway-cars 
on  the  right,  a  little  to  the  east  of  Eddy  Street,  approaching  Boston.  These 
are  among  the  monuments.  The  forts  —  dwelling-places  surroimded  by 
water,  and  in  tlieir  day  also  by  stockades  —  gave  examples  of  ditches  such 
as  we  have  surrounding  the  ancient  fort,  near  the  Tower. 

The  canals,  ditches,  deltas,  boom-dams,  ponds,  fish-ways,  forts,  dwellings, 
walls,  terraces  of  theatre  and  amphitheatre,  scattered  throughout  the  basin 
of  the  Charles,  are  fhe  monuments  I  had  in  mind  when  I  said  there  was  not 
a  square  mile  draining  into  the  river  that  lacked  an  incontestable  monument 
of  the  presence  of  the  Northmen. 

To  make  clearer  our  conception  of  the  picture  I  am  trying  to  present, 
let  us  follow  an  individual  block  of  mosur  wood. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  canals  at  the  base  of  the  hillsides  along  the  tribu- 
taries to  the  Charles.  The  block  of  mclsur  wood  we  will  follow  shall  be  the 
burr,  or  wart,  growing  on  an  oak  near  the  top  of  the  slope  along  Stony 
Brook,  a  quarter  of  a  mile  above  the  Fitchburg  Crossing  between  Waltham 
and  Weston.  The  tree  on  which  the  burr  grows  is  felled  by  the  axe,  and  the 
trunk  above  and  below  the  burr  cut  off.      The  wood  of  the  trunk  portion 


20 


DISCnVKUY  OF  THE   AXCFENT  CITY  OF  NORfMHEOA. 


of  the  block  Ih  hewn  nwny,  to  reduce  its  weight  and  size.  The  block,  ho 
shorn  and  shapi-d,  is  rolled  down  the  hill  till  it  reaches  the  canal,  where  it 
floats  with  other  blocks,  rolled  down  by  other  choppers,  in  a  sluggish  current, 
to  be  discharj,'ed  at  the  outlet  into  Stony  Hrook,  or  on  a  delta  as  at  the  end 
of  the  ditch  near  the  Tower,  which  is  on  n  little  ridge  projecting  into  the 
Itay,  or  Iicij(t  (literally  a  norutnbci/d)} 

The  dischargo  on  the  delta  jxM-mitted  assortment  before  making  up  the 
rafts  that  were  to  descend  the  Charles,  This  detention  would  enable  each 
chopper,  at  intervals,  to  select  and  mark  the  fruit  of  his  labor,  or  coch 
contractor  to  gather  and  identify  the  results  of  the  work  of  his  several 
axemen.  There  were  evidences,  before  the  reservoir  was  establisliod,  of 
boom-dams  and  ponds  on  Stony  Bmok  at  various  points  above,  which  might 
have  been  used  for  marking  or  assorting  and  rafting  the  burrs.  Once  in  the 
Charles,  the  rafts  would  descend  to  the  required  great  boom-dcm  at  the  sea 
port  of  Norumbega,  wherever  that  might  be. 

Do  some  think  that  1  have  given  undeserved  dignity  to  the  ditches  in 
calling  them  canals  ?  They  are  so  named  in  the  old  deeds  in  Weston.  If 
you  look  at  them  on  the  left  of  the  highway  between  Sibley's  and  Weston, 
with  the  stone  walls  on  either  side,  you  will  not  wonder  that  the  word 
'•  canal "  as  well  as  "  ditch  "  should  have  suggested  itself  They  are  so 
called  on  the  published  town  maps  of  Millis  and  Ilolliston,  many  miles 
above  us. 

Now  let  us  return  fn  the  sentences  in  the  Saga  of  Thorfinn  that  liave 
held  such  vast  secrets. 

It  was,  we  remember,  a  single  article  o(  domestic  use,  in  part  composed 
of  wood,  which  was  paid  for  with  £\C>  sterling  (Beamish),  —  a  sum  which  in 
modern  equivalents  of  labor  would  be  several  times  greater!  It  must  have 
been  something  valued  by  the  travelling  Bremen  merchant,  not  l)ecause 
of  its  ossociation  with  Thorfinn.  but  for  .something  else,  to  a  merchant,  of 

*  The  Norse  aiid  Alc^)nquin  have  common  elements.  I  wa.s  at  first  surprised  and  then  delighted 
with  this  coincidence.  It  |)oints  to  dccpor  truth.  Tlio  roots  no  ami  liih  an<l  the  uttemnco  u'l  arc  com- 
mon to  Norso  and  AlRonqnin,  and  many  other  luuguages,  classic  and  aborigvnal.  But,  this  will  be 
discussed  at  length  elsewhere. 


mi^M 


fliM 


V 


*»«»-.i~'«  '«B^ 


WW 


,,.4J"- 


T 


I 


a;.:,    .\N:i   canal.   OU    UITCH    NliAK    NOHHK    DAM. 


i- 


ttl  ONK  WALL  AND  CANAL  NKAH  TMI-".  NOHSE  DAM  AND  SIBLEY'.S  STATION 

FITC11HUH(-.    H.   R. 


DISCOVERY   OF  THE   ANCIENT  CITY  OF  NOllUMBEGA. 


27 


vastly  greater  moment.  Let  us  assume  for  the  occasion,  what  we  shall 
presently  find  lully  sustained,  that  it  was  because  it  suggested  the  basis 
of  an  indmtrial.  advenlure.     Wliat  then  was  it  that  gave  value  to  the  7nosurr 

wood  ? 

In  the  last  canto  of  "The  Lord  of  the  Isles"  occurs  the  couplet  (it  is 

King  James  who  »peaks  at  the  banquet), — 

"  '  Bring  hero,'  he  said,  '  the  mfisers  four 
My  noble  fathers  loved  of  yore.'  " 

A  reference  to  the  appendix  of  the  edition  of  Scott  edited  by  Lockhart 
reveals  that  these  "  mfisers"  were  wooden  JrM^-cv/yM  —  flagons,  beakers  — 
mounted  in  silver,  and  kept  by  King  Robert  the  Bruce  as  heirlooms  in 
an  iron  chest,  with  other  bric-a-brac,  gold  and  silver  ornaments,  and  the 

royal  treasure. 

Maser  wood  was  employed  in  the  manufacture  of  communion  cups  for 
cliurch  service,  — chalices,  — and  is  mentioned  in  inventories  of  ancient 
cathedrals.     It  is  also  mentioned  by  Spenser,— 

"  A  mighty  mazer  bowl  of  wine  was  set." 

And  here  is  a  line  from  Ben  Jonson,  — 

"  Their  brimful  mazers  to  the  feasting  bring." 

On  going  back  to  the  root  of  the  word,  it  proves  to  be  the  same  as 
that  of  mass,  and  originated  in  the  process  by  which  wheaten  flour  and 
water  could,  with  kneading,  be  made  to  increase  in  size  and  become  a 
mass.  (Skeat.)  The  moistened  gluten  became  adhesive ;  more  flour  would 
cling ;  and  so,  by  alternate  additions  of  water  and  Hour  and  kneading,  the 
dough  would  increase  in  volume.  From  this  came  the  name  maza,  which  the 
Spanish  give  to  the  dough  of  corn  moal,  —  a  woid  in  use  in  Mexico  to-day, 
and  the  source  of  the  specific  botanical  name  of  Indian  corn  in  Zca  mais. 
The  word  in  St.  Domingo  is  tnahlz.  The  early  Tilgrims  heard  of  it  as  Indian 
imkum.     Tlic  kneading  gave  to  the  flour  and  water  mixed  a  fibrous,  interla- 


28 


DISCOVERY   OF  TIIK   ANCIENT   CITY   OF   NORUMBEGA. 


cing  texture,  which  bound  the  whole  together.  This  was  the  mass,  which  gave 
its  name  to  the  Sacrament  in  which  it  served.  Miiser  wood  possessed  this 
texture.  Maser,  or  mazit);  or  masiir  wood  is  defined,  in  Old  High  German,  ns 
"warty  outgrowth  from  trees," — we  call  them  burrs,  or  borls.  It  could  bo 
wrought  into  thin  forms,  and  would  not  nadili/  crack  or  split.  Tlie  Swedes 
had  scale-pans  for  weighing  made  of  this  wood,  thin  and  light,  and  also  plates 
and  trenchers  and  kneading-troughs  and  bowls  and  goblets.  Maser  wood 
is  still  used  in  this  country  to  make  mortars  for  grinding  pepper,  cinnamon, 
and  the  like  in  domestic  service ;  also  for  kneading-troughs.  There  was 
a  factory  for  wooden  mortars  and  other  products  of  the  turning-latlie  on 
Chester  Brook,  —  Mead's.  This  wood  may  have  been  used  more  or  less  in 
the  Old  World  in  place  of  the  costly  bronze  and  perishable  glass  and 
earthenware,  —  great  wants  of  civilization.  In  ancient  and  very  early 
times  it  was  used  for  war-clubs.  A  snuill  growth  of  stem  surrounded  by 
a  ring  of  the  maser  growth  was  easily  converted  into  a  war-club,  —  the 
club  of  Hercules.  (Larousse.)  It  became  the  symbol  of  command  carried 
by  the  leader,  and  was  the  foundation  of  a  u.sage,  or  fashion,  that  pre- 
vails to  this  day,  and  preserves  the  use  of  the  word  in  the  wacc,  borne 
before  the  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Commons  as  well  as  of  the  American 
Congress,  —  before  the  Lord  Mayor,  the  Lord  Chancellor,  and  so  on.  We 
SCO  traces  of  this  word  in  the  iiiaxc  of  the  dance  and  the  7)iazc  of  a  laby- 
rinth ;  in  viasiir/ca,  the  Polish  dance ;  in  macerate,  a  process  of  knc-ading  (see 
also  master  and  mcastire). 

Now,  maser  wood  was  tough,  lasting,  decorative ;  did  not  grow  every- 
where and  on  all  trees ;  was  sought  for,  and  paid  for  generously,  by  the 
Church,  the  aristocracy,  the  municipality,  the  government,  and  for  domes- 
tic uses.  It  had  already  naturally  become  relatively  scarce  in  Europe. 
It  was  a  form  of  wood-growth  that  pointed  possibly  to  the  old  age  of 
the   forest.'     A  virgin  supply  would  be  a  prize  to   be  laid   before   enter- 

'  Hero  m.iy  Imvc  been  tlio  seed  of  expansicni  into  a  prent  industry,  and  a  comnieren  witli  tlio  New 
World  conducted  primarily  and  chiefly  by  or  through  the  Northnn'n.  Wo  catch  glimpses  of  its  spread, 
possibly,  in  (ho  ancient  Unizil  (lie.  Arhre.i.  island  of  woods),  in  liarcn'non  carried  across  the  seas  by 
the  Basques,  and  in  chance  arrivals  at  other  points  in  Europe.     The  Massachusetts  Indians  conceived 


,:^^t;:^;i 


^'~~'  ■^'  .*;-■-.!'.>  i'*-*  :^'««;^-j"X'w-'-v «.<*•'■ 


ftiifcl  '■'^:'.^.^-' 


BUHHSON  OAK  TREES  ON    IllE  LINE  OF  DIT-CH  L.EADINlJ    IC)   I'HORFINNS  L.ANDlNi^. 


-.X :^    .?.i. 


DISCOVERY  OF  THE  ANCIENT  CITY  OF  NORUMDEGA. 


29 


prising  merchants,  wood-donlers,  and  decorators  of  houses  and  furniture. 
Leif  and  Froydia  knew  of  its  vahic,  as  also  Thorlinn,  and  it  was 
their  i)rincipal  cargo  on  leaving  Vinland.  The  Bremen  merchant  was  con- 
versant with  the  wants  of  civilization  and  the  methods  of  enterprise. 
Thorfinn  did  not  notice,  or  take  account  of,  the  muscr  scah-paiis  of  the 
husasnotra  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  enterprising  Southern  man.  lie 
knew  that  the  wood  cuuld  be  wnnujM  into  thin  forms  without  liabiliti/  to  crack 
or  wnrp,  and  appreciated  the  significance  of  a  new  source. 

At  first  the  maser  wood  could  be  gathered  near  the  settlement,  as 
we  have  seen  ;  but  the  supply  would  soon  be  exhausted.  The  choppers 
must  go  farther.  There  were  no  horses,  no  roads.  The  obvious  method 
of  transportation  was  by  water,  —  at  first  from  the  immediate  wooded 
shores  of  the  Charles,  then  from  the  shores  of  its  tributaries,  and  then 
along  artificial  canals,  conducting  to  these  tributaries  and  the  river.  But 
to  prevent  the  blocks  from  going  out  to  sea,  there  must  be  dams  at  the 
mouths  of  the  tributaries  to  arrest  them.  1  had  found  many  canals  lead- 
ing to  tributaries  and  to  the  Charles,  when  I  reflected  that  if  I  had 
rightly  divined  the  office  of  these  canals,  there  must  be  at  the  mouth  of 
each  tributary,  or  along  the  stream  near  and  above  it,  a  dam  and  pond, 
or  the  remains  of  them  or  their  equivalents,  wherever  the  industry  of 
the  miiser  wood  was  prosecuted  by  the  Northmen.  I  have  traced  these 
dams  up  the  Charles  nearly  to  its  extreme  source.  I  have  followed  them 
on  the  Neponset  and  the  Piscataqua,  and  on  the  tributaries  to  the  Merrimac. 
Not  only  the  boom-dams  at  or  near  the  mouths  of  the  streams  falling  into 
the  Charles,  but  the  canals  all  over  Newton  and  Weston,  in  Belmont  and 
Watertown,  and  Woburn  and  Arlington  and  Medford  and  Cambridge,  in 
Dedhain   and   Millis   and   IloUiston  and  elsewhere,  are   frequently   walled 

the  early  English  colonists  could  have  come  only  for  wood.  But  even  in  Thorfinn's  time,  in  the  ac- 
count of  Freyilis,  it  is  relatod  that  "the  expedition  to  Vinland  was  commonly  esteemed  to  be  both 
lucrative  and  honorable."  Her  vessels,  as  wo  have  seen,  broiicfht  homo  wood  from  Vinland.  Leif 
owed  his  added  name  —  "  the  Lucky  "  —  to  having  had  the  good  fortune  to  save  the  crew  o'  a  wrecked 
ship  Kiaded  with  wood  on  its  way  to  Greenland.  The  importation  of  certain  kinds  of  wood  from  the 
region  of  Viidaiid  was  already  an  estnbli.shod  industry.  Gudrid  told  the  Pope  at  Rome  of  the  Chris- 
tian aettloments  by  Scandinavians,  already  in  her  time,  in  Vinland.     See  also  Adam  von  Bremen. 


Alrtii^«iiMliiiiiiiVir  iitfiiilll 


WmKSS^^mmsmif>.^immimm  ■jmw  wimirinin smsimft-vmm,»<m». 


I 


30 


DISCOVERY  OF  THE  ANCIENT  CITY   OF  NOUUMHEGA. 


with  Btonc,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Cheesecake  and  Coldspring,  where  the 
Boston  and  Albany  Railroad  crosses  below  Newtonville,  and  near  the  Catholic 
Theological  Seminary  in  Brigliton,  and  the  stream  crossing  the  highway 
between  Sibley's  and  Weston.  Undoubtedly  the  walls  have  been  repaired 
in  modern  times,  and  in  some  cases  it  will  be  dilVicult  to  distinguish  be- 
tween ancient  canals  and  modern  ditches  for  drainage.  Some  of  the  dams 
are  very  massive.  In  some  cases  the  ponds  have  more  or  less  been  fdled 
with  alluvial  deposit,  and  now  constitute  meadow-land,  or  a  swamp,  as  at 
the  mouth  of  the  Cheesecake.  In  others  a  modern  dam  below  has  sub- 
mer"-ed  the  mouth  of  the  stream,  —  in  which  cases  the  outline  of  the  dam 
is  sometimes  betrayed  in  the  growth  of  shrubbery.  In  a  few  cases  a 
canal  ends  in  a  delta,  — as  on  Eddy  Street  in  Newton,  near  the  fish-traps 
on  the  Cheesecake,  and  at  the  end  of  the  canal  near  the  Tower.  In 
nianv  cases  the  uum  is  accoinpar.icd  by  .1  fish-wny,  — as  on  the  stream  from 
Lexington  to  the  Mystic,  and  on  Mother  Brook. 

Along  these  canals  and  tributaries  are  artificial  islands  that  once  gave 
sites  and  protection  to  Norse  homes,  — as  you  may  see  near  the  railroad 
station  at  West  Newton  on  the  street  toward  the  Lower  Falls,  and  near 
Burroughs  Pond.  One  is  still  indicated  in  the  grounds  of  Hon.  Chauncy 
Smith  in  Cambridge,  in  the  broad  mound  around  which  a  canal  formerly 
conducted  water  from  the  slopes  beyond  Craigie  Street.  The  original 
path  of  the  modern  Brattle  Street  crossed  on  tlie  boom-dam  below  the 
pond  into  which  the  canal  led,  and  which  has  only  recently  been  filled. 
The  dwellings  had  the  additional  protection  of  stockades,  like  the  old 
fort  near  the  Tower,  occupied  after  the  Northmen  by  the  Breton  French 
as  a  trading-post,  as  remarked  by  Thevet. 

All  these  boom-dams  at  the  entrance  to  the  Charles  point  to  a  larger 
boom-dam  across  the  Charles,  where  the  total  harvest  of  blocks  from  all 
the  basins  might  be  drawn  from  the  water  and  piled  to  dry.  That  must 
have  been  near  the  place   where  they  were  shipped. 

Do  you  ask  now,  Whore  did  these  blocks  find  place  for  shipment? 
When  I   answer   that,  I   shall  have   turned   aside   the   screen   which   has 


DISCOVERY  OF  THE  ANCIENT  CITY  OF  NORUMDEGA. 


31 


SO  long  baffled  the  students  of  New  England  cartography,  and  shown  you 
the  Hite  of  the  ancient  Norumbega. 

Go  with  me  down  the  Cliiirles  from  the  Tower  past  Mington  and  Lily 
Point  Grove,  and  the  great  Watch  Factory  of  Waltham,  and  the  boom- 
dam  at  the  mouth  of  Beaver  Brook,  now  a  pond  filled  with  deposit  from 
the  brook,  past  the  swamp  at  the  mouth  of  the  Cheesecake,  past 
Bemis's  Station,  past  the  terraced  hillside  on  the  right,  which  is  entitled 
to  more  study  than  I  have  been  able  to  give  to  it,  and  at  length  we 
shiill  come  to  a  stone  dam  over  wliich  the  sweet  water  of  the  river  pours 
to-day.  This  dam  is  made  of  field  bowlders  such  as  compose  the  beau- 
tiful new  churches  in  Weston,  Watertown,  and  Wellesley,  —  not  square- 
cornered  stones,  or  split  or  hewn,  or  the  product  of  drilling  in  the  quarry 
and  blasting,  but  like  the  larger  stones  of  the  Tower,  adjusted  to  their 
most  stable  positions.  It  is  at  the  head  of  tide- water.  Within  the  memory 
of  livino-  men,  once  only  has  the  incoming  tide  risen  above  the  crest  of 
the  dam.  It  was  when  the  easterly  storm  and  tide  and  wind  swept 
away  the  Minot's  Ledge  Liglit.  With  that  single  exception,  —  so  I  have 
been  told,  — the  dam  has  been  the  dividing  line  between  fresh  water 
and  salt  at  high  tide. 

Has  it  ever  occurred  to  any  one  to  ask  how  long  that  dam  has  been 
there?  The  Watertown  Historical  Society  has  just  come  into  being,  or  it 
would  not  have  ooen  left  till  to-day  to  demand  an  answer  to  this  question. 

The  earliest  man  of  Winthrop's  colony  to  ascend  the  Charles  was 
Roger  Clapp  (1630).  His  story  is  a  part  of  the  history  of  Watertown. 
Let  me  repeat  it  to  you.  lie  describes  the  narrow,  shallow  rapids  below,* 
which  he  reached,  as  he  estimated,  three  leagues  from  the  mouth  of  the 
river.  His  party  found  in  the  neighborhood  an  encampment  of  Indians, 
some  three  lumdred  by  estimate,  at  the  head  of  tide-Avater,  where  some 
of  them  were  taking  fi.sh  in  the  shallows  above  the  tide-water. 

1  The  shallows  —  rapids  at  ebb  tido  —  proventnd  the  explorers  (Champlain  perhaps  among  them) 
from  ascending  the  Charles  to  the  site  of  Norumbega.  Heylin  ant!  thers  ascribe  to  the  falls  on  the 
American  rivers  the  failure  more  thoroughly  to  ixploro  the  interior.  Had  the  explorers  gone  up  at 
^()(/-tide,  it  might  not  have  been  left  to  our  time  to  find  Norumbega. 


32 


DISCOVERY  OF  THE  ANCIENT  CITY  OK  NOUUMDEGA. 


Clapp  observed  the  phallows  at  the  hond  of  tide-water  at  Watertown, 
and  also  shared  the  product  of  the  devices  used  by  the  Inthaiis  for  fishing 
purposes  just  ])elo\v,  which  involved  the  descent  and  fall  of  the  stream 
as  early  as  1C30.  Wood,  who  came  to  the  country  the  year  before  Clapp, 
and  loft  in  August,  1G33,  and  whoso  book  ("New  England's  Prospect") 
bears  date  of  1034,  wrote  of  the  fall  of  fresh  waters  and  the  fishing  at 
a  weir  below. 

This  full  and  the  fishing  were  mentioned  by  Josselyn  in  1038.  Later 
still,  Duntim  wrote  of  a  "  (jrcaf  fall  of  fresh  waters  which  convoigh  them- 
Belves  into  the  ocean  through  the  Charles  River." 

The  weir  fishing  was  continued  by  the  whites,  and  the  profit  in  later 
times  divided  between  Watertown  and  Brighton  down  to  1800;'  and 
I  had  the  honor  a  few  months  ago  to  converse  at  length  with  the 
latest  custodian  of  this  industry,  the  present  Town  Clerk  of  Watertown, 
Mr.  Ingram,  who  pointed  out  to  me  the  theatre  of  the  industry  with 
the  weir.  He  conducted  me  also  to  the  oldest  map  of  Watertown.  in 
the  Secretary  of  State's  office  in  Bost(m ;  and  on  that  I  found  traced  the 
canal  through  which  flowed  the  waters  that  turned  the  first  wheel  of  the 
first  flouring-mill  in  New  England. 

Let  us  look  a  little  further.  There  may  be  some  among  ns  who  have 
not  heard  of  Roger  Clapp,  the  first  of  the  Puritans  to  reach  the  head  of 
tide-water  on  the  Charles ;  or  possibly  of  Wood  or  Josselyn  or  Dunton, 
who  wrote  of  the  spot  a  few  years  later.  But  there  is  one  of  whom 
every  son  and  daughter  of  New  England  has  heard,  John  Winthroj),— 
the  great  leader  of  the  Colony  of  Massachusetts  Bay.  He  was  the  an- 
cestor of  the  venerable  scholar,  stitesman,  orator,  public  servant,  wlio  — 

"  In  nn  old  age  seroiio  (ind  hn<;lit 
And  lovely  as  a  Lai)l:ind  night,"  — 

is  the  living  object  of  our  reverent  and  grateful  homage.  John  Winthrop 
records  nn  incident  in  the  history  of  the  Colony  that  relates  to  the  age 
of  the  dam  at  Watertown. 

>  See  Nelson's  History  of  Waltham. 


DISCOVERY  OF  THE  ANCIENT  CITY  OF  NOIIUMBEOA. 


33 


On    the    very    npot    whore,   nccorcViiig    to    popuhir    beUetV    the    first 
flouring-iiiill   in    New   England  —  possibly  in  America  — was  set  up,  now 
stands  its  ellicient  successor  (more  than  one  generation  of  mills  between), 
still  in  active  service,  depending  for  its  water-power  upon  the  same  difter- 
encc  of  level  between  the  water  above  the   dam   and    below  tlie    mill,  of 
which  advantage  was  taken  by  the  early  colonists.     The  ancient  mill  was 
driven  by  an  undershot  wheel,  as   was   the   modern   one,  till  the   turbine 
came,  the  water  passing   under  instead   of   over  the  wheel.     It  happened 
on   one   occasion   that  a  little  child  fell  into  the  raceway  above  the  mill. 
Before  the  eyes,  but  beyond  the  rescue  of  the  miller,  the  child  floated  into 
the  flume  above  the  wheel.     An  accident  had  removed  one  of  the  blades 
of  the  wheel.     As  Winthrop  relates,  a  special  Providence  directed  that  the 
current  should  bring  the  child  exactly  into  the  place  of  the  lost  blade  of 
the  water-wheel,  — ''for  otherwise,"  he  says,  ''if  an  eel  pass  through,  it  is 
cut  asunder,"  —  so  that  when  the  miller  reached  the  outlet  of  the  ilume, 
he   found   the  child   absolutely  unharmed,  sitting  waist-deep  in  the  water 
below.     And  now,  so  long  as  the  history  of  the  Massachusetts  Bay  Colony 
shall    be    read,   so    long    will    the    story    of    the    wonderful    deliverance 
of   the   little   cliild   be   remembered   as   an   incident   of   the   early  life   of 
Watertown. 

The  significance  of  the  event  to  us  is  that  it  preserves  the  testimony 
of  Winthrop  as  to  the  age  of  the  dam  above.  The  water-power  was 
gained  by  the  dam.  It  was  a  fall  of  only  four  and  a  half  feet,  as  Mr. 
Mugce,  the  present  proprietor,  informs  me;  and  this  involved  a  canal  or 
raceway  of  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  mile  in  length  along  the  gentle  descent 
of  the  Charles. 

Who  built  the  dam  ?  It  was  made  of  natural,  rounded,  massive  field- 
bowlders.  English  pioneers,  economical  of  time  and  men,  in  a  region  of 
virgin  forests  build  dams  of  loood  cut  along  the  banks  nbo\e  and  floated 
down,  not  of  scattered  bowlders  gathered  over  great  areas  from  the  sur- 

>  The  mill-stones  were  brought  from  England,  and  are  mentioned  in  the  cost  of  equipment  for 
the  colony. 


84 


DlSrOVEUY  (IF   THE   ANCIENT  CITY   OF   NOUlMliEGA. 


face  of  tho  soil.  All  history  ia  silent.  Dudley,  who  later  had  ft  lawsuit 
about  tho  ownership  of  the  mill,  iw  silent.  Winthrop  himself  is  Bilent. 
Could  the  thoughtful  pen  that  recorded  tho  discovery  of  Adam's  chair, 
since  lost,  and  again  and  recently  found  ;  rcconied  the  fight  between 
the  mouse  and  the  snake,  witnessed  with  such  natural  interest  by  tho 
Puritans   who    f  '   a   ring   around    the    combatants ;    as  also    this    inci- 

dent at  tho  nii  .inc,  —  could  tho  same  thoughtful  pen  have  failed  to 
mention  so  considerable  an  achievement  in  the  interests  of  tho  infant 
colony  as  the  construction  of  a  stone  dam  across  the  Charles,  had  it 
occurred  contemporaneously  with  these  other  events?  Impossible.  What 
follows  ?     This :    J'/jc  dam  was  licre  when   Winlhrop  came. 

But  before  Winthrop  came,  Roger  Clapp  had  learned  of  tho  Indians 
at  net-fishing  in  the  shallows  at  the  head  of  tide-water,  the  fish  being 
massed  there,  because  they  could  get  no  farther  on  their  way  to  spawning- 
ground.  When  Winthrop  first  saw  the  dam  it  had  become  a  familiar 
fact.  It  had  been  found  already  built,  and  concealed  under  the  fall  of 
fresh  waters. 

The  earliest  ap  of  the  site  of  Watertown,  to  which  I  have  referred, 
has   on    it   the  d   on    which    the   flouring-mill  was  erected;    and    it   is 

recorded  that  u,  colonists  found  the  natural  canal,  or  raceway,  ^hen 
they  came.  What  again  follows  ?  This :  The  dam  teas  the  work  a 
people  who  had  come  and  gone  before  the  earliest  F)ujlish  settlement  ;i 
our  shores. 

Look  at  the  testimony  of  the  weir.  The  structure  consists  of  a  low 
stone-wall  spanning  the  river,  shaped  like  the  letter  V,  with  the  angle 
down  stream,  and  a  trap  at  the  point.  The  weir  is  submerged  at  flood- 
tide.  With  tho  flood  come  schools  of  fish  socking  spawning-ground  and 
fresh  water.  In  the  absence  of  a  dam  there  would  have  been  nothing 
to  arrest  their  progres.s,  and  they  would  not  have  stopped  at  Watertown 
any  more  than  at  any  other  point  below  or  above.  With  a  dam  the  fish 
would  mass  below,  and  with  the  ebb-tide  seek  escape  at  tho  angle  of 
the  weir.     The  fact  that  they  were  taken  in  great  numbers  at  the  pres- 


: 


f 


i 


/  ^^<r^y>p  \T'"/  ^■-^■-'    I 


/"^^^^....e. 


^V:^  7*-/ 


rt/. 


r\ 


DISCOVERY  OF  THE  ANCIENT  CITY  OF  NORUMBEGA. 


86 


ent  Watertown  by  a  weir  is  absolute  proof  of  the  existence  of  the  dam 
Wood  says  one  hundred  thousand  were  taken  in  two  tides,  —  that  is,  in  a 
single  day.  The  Indians  had  taught  the  settlers  that  the  fish  could  be 
used  for  manuring  their  corn,  and  the  poor  crop  of  1631  had  made  them 
feel  the  necessity  of  a  fertilizer. 

In  the  spring  of  1032,  authorized  by  Winthrop,  the  ivcir  was  set  up. 
The  order  presupposes  the  existence  of  the  dam;  without  it  the  weir 
would    have  had  nothing  to  catch. 

The  dam  must  have  been  already  built  before  1631.  It  could  not 
have  been  built  by  the  handful  of  Saltonstall's  half-invalid  men  between 
the  autumn  of  1631  and  the  spring  of  1632.  Why?  Because  it  was  built 
of  rounded  bowlders  gathered  from  the  fields,  not  from  quarries ;  and 
that  involved  too  much  time  and  labor.  How  do  we  know  it  was 
built  of  field  stone, -rounded  bowlders?  In  this  way.  Not  many  years 
ago  the  foundations  of  portions  of  the  dam  were  undermined,  and  the 
water  broke   through  and   left   the   structure   bare   to  its   base,   open    to 

any  eye. 

Let  us  look  at  the  Records  of  the  General  Court. 

Wood  returned  to  England  in  August,  1033.  He  records,  in  his  "New 
En-dand's  Prospect,"  that  there  was  «a  water  milne  on  Stony  Brook 
(Roxberry)"  and  another  in  Saugus.  The  mill  at  Watertown  is  under- 
stood to  have  preceded  all  others.  If  this  be  so,  it  must  have  been 
set  up,  at  the  latest,  early  in  1633.  It  was  a  work  ..f  private  enterprise, 
since  subsequent  action  of  the  General  Court  decided  that  it  belonged 
to  Mr.  Dudley  and  not  to  Mr.  Howe.  At  a  town-meeting  of  Watertown 
Jan.  3,  1634-5,  it  was  "  voted  that  four  rods  wide  on  each  side  of  the 
river  .should  be  laid  apart  to  the  use  of  the  ware,  so  that  it  may  not 
be  prejudicial  to  the  mill."  The  necessity  of  defining  the  rights  or  wants 
of  the  weir  had   been   revealed   by  experience  in   the  years  immediately 

preceding.  .  . 

As  Winthrop  was  complained  against  by  Dudley  for  personally  authorizing 
(the  General  Court  not  being  in  session)  the  construction  of  the  weir  in  the 


•  r- 


36 


DISCOVEUY  OF  THE  ANCIENT  CITY  OF   NORUMBEGA. 


winter  and  spring  of  1G31-32,  it  is  clear  the  dam  must  have  been  previously 
built. 

The  Records  of  the  Court  are  preserved.  They  contain  its  action  at  the 
session,  July  5,  1031,  authorizing  a  levy  on  the  public  for  the  opening 
of  the  canal  along  Blackstone  Street  from  the  cove  at  the  present  riayniarket 
Square  through  the  water  at  the  east,  and  another  levy,  at  the  session 
Feb.  3,  lGol-2,  x  i-  making  the  palisade  about  Newtown  (now  Cambridge). 

Now,  is  it  not  clear  that  a  large  work  on  Charles  River,  like  the  building 
of  a  stone-dam,  involving  the  labor  for  a  long  time  of  a  large  number  of 
able-bodied  men,  could  not  have  been  undertaken  without  discussion  ?  As  a 
private  matter,  it  could  not  have  been  done  .without  capital  and  the  co- 
operation of  laborers ;  as  a  public  matter,  it  could  not  have  been  under- 
taken without  the  authority  of  the  General  Court ;  but  of  this  there  is 
no  record.     Contemporary  or  subsequent  history  does  not  mention  it. 

Finally,  it  would  have  been  much  cheaper  to  have  built  a  mill  on  Clematis 
Brook,  with  abundant  fall,  and  without  a  costly  dam. 

The  meaning  of  all  this  is  that  the  dam  was  where  it  now  is  when  Win- 
throp  came. 

Why  do  T  speak  so  confidently  V  Fortunate  leisure  has  enabled  me 
to  go  far  enough  in  certain  directions  of  study  and  exploration  to  see 
what  must  he  as  a  matter  of  scientific  deduction.  When  tliat  point,  the 
what  must  he,  is  reached,  prediction  is  natural,  unavoidable,  and  safe. 
As  I  prophesied  from  the  literature  of  geography  the  finding  of  Fort 
Norumbega  at  the  junction  of  Stony  Brook  with  the  Charles,  and  went 
to  the  spot  and  found  it;  and  as  1  deduced  the  site  of  the  remains  of 
Leif  s  houses  in  Vinland  from  the  necessities  which  the  strict  construction 
of  the  Sagas  required,  and  went  to  the  spot  where  I  had  indicated  that 
the  remains  had  once  been,  and  found  them  there  more  than  a  year 
after  the  prediction  was  announced,  —  so  I  have  arrived  by  inevitable 
deduction  at  the  scat  and  centre  of  the  early  colony  of  Northmen  in 
America. 

I  do  not  deduce  the  maser  industry  from  the  presence  of  the  dam  at 


t' 


DISCOVERY  OF  THE  ANCIENT  CITY  OF  NORUMBEGA. 


87 


Watertown,  but  I  deduce  the  davi  and  scajwrt  and  docks  and  wharves  as 
essential  to  the  muscr  industry  roveidcd  in  the  Sagas. 

I  may  not  take  your  time  to  tell  of  my  interviews  with  many  of  the  best- 
informed  and  elderly  men  of  Watertown,  —  with  ladies  who  as  little  girls 
had  gathered  wild  violets  and  anemones  on  what,  with  the  exception  of 
the  trees,  were  the  otherwise  unoccupied  islands  below  the  dam,  then  as 
now  walled  about  with  substantial  masonry  without  mortar ;  or  of  my 
delight  in  finding  the  walled  channels  between  these  islands,  —  at  least 
four  in  number,  —  the  docks ;  or  the  hlack  mcadoio  iimck  under  the  gravelly 
earth  that  constitutes  the  body  of  the  walled  islands;'  or  the  parallel  cyclo- 
pean  walls  extending  on  both  sides  of  the  river  along  the  narrows  and 
shallows  to  which  Clapp  came  in  1G30.  These  walls,  extending  to  the 
opening  meadows  toward  the  Arsenal,  by  narrowing  the  channel  increased 
the  depth  of  the  Avater  at  high-tide,  and  so  made  it  practicable  to  float 
the  blocks  across  the  river  from  the  boom-dams  on  the  right  bank  below 
to  the  docks  and  wharves,  as  well  as  with  greater  ease  and  certainty  to 
lead  ships  to  and  from  the  docks ;  or  the  long  basin  for  the  reception  of 
blocks  and  their  accumulation,  which  also  serves  as  a  fish-way^  into  the 
basin  from  the  north;  or  the  great  artificial  basin  (Cook's  Pond),  the  pro- 
duct of  the  boom-dam,  on  the  opposue  side  of  the  river,  —  all  of  tchich, 
and  much  more  that  miglit  be  named,  belong  to  the  period  of  seven  to 
nine  centuries  ago :   the  ivork  of  the  Northmen. 

All  these  are  remains  of  the  ancient  seaport  of  Nonimhega.  This  was  the 
site,  pictured  on  so  many  ancient  maps,  at  the  head  of  tide-water,  on  the 
"River  that  flowed  throttfjh  a  Luke  to  the  Sea," — the  Ifojj  of  Thorfinn,  salt  at 
flood-tide  and  fresh  at  ehh,  —  the  ancient  Boston  Back  Bay.  The  islands  were 
wharves.     The  channels  between  them,  closed  or  nearly  closed  at  the  upper 


Ir 


*  This  was  alluvial  snit,  once  the  surface,  submerged  at  extreme  high-tide  below  tlie  falls,  and 
deposited  in  the  eddy  of  the  flood-tido  and  current  of  tlio  Charles  before  the  dam  was  built.  The 
propri(!tor  of  tho  foiuidry  on  the  spot  iiifornicd  me  that  lie  had  ocoasion  to  find  substantial  foundation 
t<5  support  parts  of  the  foundry.  Ho  dug  down  through  the  gravel  till  he  came  to  black  meadow  muck, 
aud  through  that  to  solid  bottom. 

"  There  is  a  fine  display  of  lioon-daras  and  fish-ways  on  Vine  Brook,  between  tho  Arlington 
Reservoir  and  the  Mystic.    See  town  m.  o. 


mii^ 


% 


r 


\r 


3g  DISCOVERY  OF   THE   ANCIENT  CITY   OF   NOUUMHEGA. 

end  near  the  hasin,  wore  docks.  On  these  wharves  the  nifisor  blocks  that 
had  lloated  down  the  Charles  had  been  arrested  and  turned  hy  tlie  dam  into 
the  basin,  — the  northern  canal,  — where  they  were  piled  to  dry  and  await 
their  turn  to  be  shipped. 

Here,  besides  the  conveniences  for  piling  under  cover  the  mfiser  blocks, 
there  were  storehouses  for  dried  salmon,  for  the  peltry  purchased  in  its 
season,  and  not  impossibly  for  the  Indian  corn  grown  on  the  plains  of 
Newton,  Danvers,  Millis,  and  Ilolliston. 

On  the  shores  above  and  below  were  naturally  shops  for  barter,  and 
dwellings  for  all  classes,  and  necessarily,  with  the  culture  of  the  Northmen, 
provision  for  amusement,  for  public  worship,  and  the  wants  of  govern- 
ment,—the  Althing,  to  which  these  early  (perhaps  earliest)  self-governing 
people  were  accustomed. 

Here  was  the  ancient  seaport  of  Yinland,  for  the  colony  that  came  after 
Thorfinn  left,  to  which  in  1121  Bishop  Upsi  came  to  hold  up  the  symbols 
of  the  Faith.  The  basin,  wharves,  docks,  canals  of  this  ancient  seaport  un- 
derlie the  city  of  Watertown  to-day,  and  are  connected  with  and  serve  its 
most  prominent  industries.  Here  came  and  went  the  connnerce  of  the 
Northmen  first;  later,  the  commerce  of  the  Frenchmen,  and  possibly  of 
still  other  peoples.  Here,  at  the  modern  Watertown,  was  the  ancient 
CITY   OF  NORUMBEGA. 

I  have  not  hesitated  to  state  this  as  the  result  of  research  that  may  not 
be  questioned, -a  research  thnt  included  the  Landfall  of  Leif  Krikson  on 
Cape  Cod.  and  the  colonization  of  Massachusetts  by  Northmen  nine  hundred 
years  ago.  To  assert  this,  among  other  things,  I  set  up  the  Tower  m 
Weston,°at  the  mouth  of  Stony  Brook,  where  I  first  found  evidences  of  the 
work  of  the  Northmen. 

Over  the  tablet  set  in  the  wall  of  the  Tower,  the  genius  of  the  architect, 
Mr.  Tryon,  has  poised  the  Scandinavian  falcon  (the  symbol  of  sovereignty 
in  Iceland)  about  to  alight  with  a  new  world  in  his  talons. 

I  may  read  what  was  designed  to  cover  the  principal  additions  to  the 
history  of  the  foundation  of  Massachusetts. 


DISCOVERY  OF  THE  ANCIENT  CITY  OF  NORUMBEGA. 


39 


AD.  1000.  A.D.  1889. 

NORUMBEGA. 

CITY:   COUNTRY:   FORT:   RIVER. 

NORUMBEGA  =  NOR'MKEGA. 

INDIAN  UTTERANCE  OF  NORBEGA,  THE  ANCIENT  FORM 

OF  NORVEGA,  NORWAY:   TO   WHICH  THE 

REGION   OF   VINLAND  WAS   SUBJECT. 


CITY 

AT  AND   NEAR   WATERTOWN, 

WHERE  REMAIN  TO-DAY 

DOCKS,  WHARVES,  WALLS,  DAMS,  BASIN. 


COUNTRY 

EXTENDING  FROM  RHODE  ISLAND  TO  THE  ST.  LAWRENCE. 

FIRST   SEEN  BY   B.TARNI   HEIUULFSON,   085  A.  D. 

LANDFALL  OF  LEIF  ERIKSON  ON  CAPE  COD,  1000  A.  D. 

NORSE  CANALS,  DAMS,   WALLS,  PAVEMENTS, 

FORTS,  TERRACED  PLACES  OF   ASSEMBLY,   REMAIN  TO-DAY. 


i*' 


H 


FORT 

AT  BASE  OF  TOWER  AND  REGION  ABOUT 

WAS  OCCUPIED  BY  THE  BRETON  FRENCH  IN  THE 

15TU,  laTH,  AND  17TII  CENTURIES. 

RIVER 

THE  CHARLES 

DISCOVERED  BY  LEIF  ERIKSON  1000  A.  D. 

EXPLORED   BY  TIIORWALD,  LEIF'S  BROTHER,  1003  A.  D. 

COLONIZED   liV   THORFINN   KARLSEFNI  1007  A.  D. 

FIRST  BISHOP  ERIK   GNUPSON   1121  A.  D. 

INDUSTRIES  FOR  350  YEARS. 

MASUR-WOOD  (BURRS),  FISH,  FURS,   AGRICULTURE. 


LATEST  NORSE  SHIP  RETURNED  TO  ICELAND  IN  1347. 


40 


DISCOVEUY  OF  THE  ANCIENT  CITY   OF  NOULMUECiA. 


It    ' 


Among  the  considerations  that  led  to  the  erection  of  the  Tower,  besides 
those  already  mentioned,  were  these:  — 

1.  It  will  coinmemorato  the  Discovkhy  of  Vinland  ano  Nouumrega 
in  the  forty-third  degree,  and  the  idontificalion  of  Norunihoga  with  Norway, 
the  home  coimtry  to  which  this  region  wivs  once  subject  by  right  of  dis- 
covery and  colonization. 

2.  It  will  invite  criticism,  and  so  sift  out  any  errors  of  interpre- 
tation into  which,  sharing  the  usual  fortune  of  the  pioneer,  I  may  have 

been  led.  , 

3.  It  will  encourage  archaeological  investigation  in  a  fascniating  and 
almost  untrodden  field,  and  be  certain  to  contribute  in  the  results  of 
research  and  exploration,  both  in  the  study  and  the  field,  to  the  histon- 
cal  treasure  of  the  Commonwealth. 

4.  It  will  help,  by  reason  of  its  more  presence,  and  by  virtue  of  the 
veneration  with  which  the  Tower  will  in  time  come  to  be  regarded,  to 
brin-  acquiescence  in  the  fruit  of  investigation,  and  so  allay  the  blind 
scepticism,  amounting  practically  to  inverted  ambition,  that  would  deprive 
Massachusetts  of  the  glory  of  holding  the  Landfall  of  Leif  E.ikson,  and 
at  the  same  time  the  seat  of  the  earliest  colony  of  Europeans  in  America. 

If  time  would  permit.  I  might  tell  you  further  of  the  musor  industry; 

of   the   fisheries   an.l   furs   and   agriculture ;   of  the   amusements,  and  the 

republican  form  of  government  inherited  with  the  Norse  blood;  of  the  social 

relations  of  the  Indians  with  the  Northmen,  and  the  splendid  nuMi  found 

bv  Thevet  and  Verra/.ano,  and  later  by  the  Pilgrims  an.l  Puritans,  in  such 

samples  of  chieftains  as  Massasoit  and  Uncas  and  King  Philip-     I  ""gl't 

point  out  the   course   of  the   Northmen,  moving  northeastward  after  the 

maser    blocks   of    the   valley   of    the    Charles   had    been    exhausted ;    the 

traces  of  their  stay  on  the  Penobscot,  and  tluMr  progress  through  the  State 

of  Maine  and  Nova  Scotia  to  Cape  Breton  ;    the   principal   causes  of   the 

decline  of  Greenland  ;   the  final  departure  of  the  last  ship   lu   the  maser 

trade  from  Markland   (Cape  Breton),  and  its  arrival  in   1347  m  Iceland. 


T 


J 


I 


^ 


Q 


X 


DISCOVKUV   UV  THE  ANCIENT  CITY  OF  NORUMHEGA 


41 


I  miKht  hint  at  the  linos  of  roHCirch  specially  connected  with  traces 
of  the  language  of  the  Northmen,  Buch  a«  the  fact  recorded  by  Roger 
WilliamH  that  the  title  -Hachem"  or  "Haganioro"  of  the  In.lians  haH  the 
sa.no  root  an  mk,  the  Icelandic  wonl  for  "  king."  All  this,  how.vor,  1 
must,  in  the  u.ain,  leave  to  othorn,  who  will  .-ntor,  with  now  entlum.asn, 
„,ul  n.ore  time  before  then.,  into  tluH  fresh  held  in  archu3ologioal  and 
geographical   research. 

It  has  been  BUggested  that  the  trustworthiness  of  my  conclusions  might 
be  tested  by  the  spado, -that  bronze  and  pottery  shouM  l)e  sought  for. 

Articles  of  such  materials  were  not  improbably  to  some  extent  in  use 
in  Vinland  and  Norumbega.  Remnants  of  much  corroded  bronze  have  been 
found  by  Nordenskjol.l  in  Greenland,  from  which  place  the  early  Northmen 
came.  Porous  pottery  wovdd,  perhaps,  be  less  likely  to  survive  m  such  a 
climate  ••  it  lias,  however,  been  found  in  ancient  Norway.  But  of  unple- 
,nent8  which  we  know  from  the  Sagas  were  in  use  here  by  the  Northmen, 
wo  have  found  specimens.  Thorwald's  men  subsisted  through  their  fir.t 
winter  on  the  salmon  of  the  Charles.  Here  is  a  stone  sinker  found  near 
the  site  of  ThorwahVs  dwelling-house.  I  have  seen  and  photographed 
several  others  found  al,>ng  th.  banks  of  the  Charles.  Sin.ilar  to  these 
were  the  sinkers  used  by  the  Indians. 

Here  is  an  Indian  arrow-point  picked  up  on  the  Held  of  the  battle 
between  Thorf.nn  and  the  Sknvlings,  in  which  a  man  of  distinction. 
Snorri  Tliorbrandson,  fell.  His  body  was  found,  so  the  Sagas  say,  with  a 
sharp  stone  sticking  iu  his  head.  If  the  "sharp  stone"  may  not  have  been 
a  flint  arrow-point,  but  a  stone  tomahawk,  here  is  a  ^liarp  stone  that 
„Kiy  bear  that  name,  which  was  found  on  the  same  battlefield. 

A  great  stone  mortar,  such  as  Northmen  used  in  very  early  times  to 
grind  their  grain  iu  Norway,  was  foun.l,  as  already  mentioned,  near  the 
Bite  of  the  Tower,  and  is  now  set  in  the  wall  near  its  base. 

Copper  and    brass,    in    the   form    of  imploments   of   war  or   articles  of 
.  Glazed  pottery,  Du  Chaillu  says,  was  unknown  in  U>e  north.     Montelius  says  the  same. 


'J. 


42 


DISCOVERY  OF  THE  ANCIENT  CITY  OF  NORFMBEGA. 


1    < 


decoration,  have  been  found  in  graves  within  the  territory  of  Norumbega. 
In  the  grave  of  Uncas,  in  Norwich,  Conn.,  a  very  ancient  niiiser-bowl,  long 
used,  was  found,  and  is  now  preserved  in  the  Slater  Museum. 

I  have  seen  stone  tablets,  bearing  inscriptions  apparently  of  great  his- 
toric interest,  some  of  which  may  have  been  wrought  by  men  of  Norse 
descent.     Mr.  Ober,  of  Beverly,  has  had  them  photographed. 

Such  articles,  as  well  as  bronze  and  pottery,  possibly  await  the  student. 

My  own  search,  however,  has  been  less  detailed.  I  have  looked  for 
the  evidences  and  seats  of  certain  industries  pursued  through  long  periods 
of  time  and  on  a  large  scale  by  Northmen  ;  I  have  looked  for  the  site 
and  memorials  of  an  historic  city,  built,  long  occupied  as  a  seaport,  and 
abandoned  many  centuries  ago ;  I  have  sought  the  birthplace  of  the  earliest 
European  colony  on  our  shores,  and  something  of  its  course  as  a  people ; 
and  I  have  to-day  sketched  the  results  of  my  labors. 


To  show    that    the  Vinland    oF    Leif    wus 


^    >i   '^   i^^iL^jk 


between    (Za^'a  Arin  omd    GahejOod. 


'♦^""H" 


3»i         3f     v<r|       J«f         »|        ^ 


srsp/f^v/us.  rrjo. 


\j 


j^^gj^Hrom  fl.Frenct)  map    1543 


SOI./S.   KOf 


No  r  I  u  .nub  vv  ^^  a  .^v 


N  o  r  \l  u  .nub  o.  ^  a  .^v  -^  *yt.  XJ^x-%^^'''->-^ 


r^Ej(a/A!±f 


VINLAND. 


By  E.    H.   clement. 


M 


MIST    AND    FLOTSAM. 


A.  D.    1000. 


Earth  endures  j 

Stfln"  abiile  — 

Sliiiie  ilown  in  the  dUI  sea; 

01.1  arc  till'  shores ; 

liut  wIktl'  aril  old  men? 

I  who  have  seen  much 

Such  have  I  never  seen. 

Here  is  the  land 
Shat.'t;y  with  wood 
With  Its  old  valley, 
Mound,  and  lioo<l, 
But  the  heritors? 
Fled  like  the  flood's  foam, 
The  lawyer  and  the  laws 
And  the  kinjidoiu 
Clean  swept  lierefrom. 

Kmkhson,  Earth-Song. 

Foil  Fancy's  (,'ift 
Can  nu'unlains  litt: 
The  Muse  can  knit 
What  is  past,  what  is  done 
With  the  wcIj  thit  's  just  liecun. 
Emeksos,  The  I'i'it. 

SorNDKTU  the  prophetic  wind, 

The  shadows  shake  on  the  rock  hehind. 

And  the  countless  leaves  <.f  the  pine  are 

strinRs 
Tuned  to  the  lay  the  wood-god  sings. 


Hearken  !  hearken  ! 
If  thou  wouldst  know  the  mystic  sonR 
Chanted  when  the  sphere  was  young. 
Aloft,  ahroad,  the  i>aan  swells; 
O  wire  man,  hear' si  thou  half  it  tells'? 
O  wise  man,  hear'st  tlum  the  least  part  " 

•'V  is  the  ehronielc  of  art. 
To  the  open  ear  it  sings 
Sweet  the  genesis  of  things. 

Kmkusun,  Woodnoltt. 

My  spirit  bows  in  gratitude 

Before  the  Giver  of  all  good. 

Who  fashioned  so  the  human  mind 

That,  from  the  waste  of  Time  hehind, 

A  simple  stone,  or  mound  of  earth. 

Can  summon  the  departed  forth ; 

Qui  ken  the  Vast  to  life  again, 

Ttu'  I'resent  lose  in  what  hath  heen, 

Anil  in  their  primal  freshness  show 

The  huried  forms  of  long  ago. 

As  it  a  porlion  of  that  Thought 

By  which  the  F.tenial  Will  is  wrought, 

Whose  impulse  (ills  anew  with  breath 

The  frozen  siditude  of  Death, 

To  mortal  minds  wen>  sometimes  lent, 

To  mortal  musings  sometimes  sent, 

To  whi-per  — even  when  it  .seems 

I'.ut  Memory's  fantasy  of  dreams  — 

Thr<.ugh  the  miml's  waste  of  woe  and  sin, 

Of  an  immortal  origin! 

WiiirnKii,  7"»i!  Nvrtemen. 


•mmmttm 


iritanMettsJI 


MARE  OCEANUM. 


WiiKN  Earth's  form  and  void  begun 

Underneath  the  ancient  Sun, 

Poured  round  all  the  flowing  Ocean 

First  obeying  Law  in  motion. 

First  of  things  terrestrial 

Acknowledging  celestial ; 

Free  still  of  all  governance 

Save  eternal  ordinance. 

Universal  potency 

Lurks  in  all-embracing  sea, 

All-watering  stream,  all-nourishing, 

From  seeding  unto  flourishing; 

Pervading  eailh  in  myriad  form, 

Now  glacier,  now  summer  storm,  — 

Visiting  thus  but  to  return 

Every  drop  to  Ocean's  urn  ; 

All-bearing  on  its  broad  highway 

From  yonder  cape  to  far  Catiiay; 

Ever  the  same  to  all  men  free, 

Whoe'er  on  land  may  master  be, — 

One  law  deduces  history  thence  : 

Tilings  continue  as  commence. 

Wiien  the  first  savage  launched  his  tree, 

Bestriding  it  in  southern  sea. 

Then  hollowed  it,  then  shaped  an  oar, 

He  linked  tlie  whole  world  shore  to  shore. 

So  bid  we  vikings'  history 


46 

Surrender  us  onr  mj-stery. 

Ui)nian  legions'  solid  walla 

Till  Britons  still  when  they  were  thralls; 

But  our  unfiithomiihlo  wave 

Was  ne'er  to  old  Homo's  arms  tnado  slave : 

Yet  Christian  Rome's  new  inlluence 

Is  wider  tniced  by  finer  senst) ; 

Surpassing  war,  a  mission's  zeal 

Red  Erie  tamed  and  laid  Leifs  keel, 

So  the  Sea's  worshipper  devout 

Will  ever  draw  new  wealth  thereout. 

Or  noon  or  niglit,  or  fair  or  foul, 

Patient  as  fasting  monk  in  cowl, 

He  cons  Earth's  opening  page  here  spread, 

A  blank  still,  or,  if  writ,  unread 

Save  by  the  subtle  divination 

Of  Science's  imagination. 


ODi'SSEYS. 

Man  here  faced  eternity,  — 
Poring  on  the  mystery, 
Ever  venturing  in  its  brink. 
Better  learning  not  to  sink, 
Still  its  wide,  gray  jiastures  grazing, 
Still  beyond  and  farther  gazing. 
The  eldest  heroes  of  the  world 
Plied  the  oar  and  sails  unfurled, 
The  eldest  poet  sang  the  Sea: 
Make  us  another  Odyssey ! 
Tell  us  more,  and  always  more ; 
How  they  added  shore  to  shore. 
Out  from  Posts  of  Hercules 


1 


I 


^1 


47 

Toward  tho  far  Ilesperides ; 
How  Atlantis  o'eu  tlicy  boanned, 
Or  believed  they  traced  its  atrand, 
Looniiii}^  in  enchanted  mist ; 
How,  of  sudden,  sails  were  kissed 
liy  scented  breeze  fioni  llajipy  Isles 
Whose  fable  seamen  still  beguiles. 
What  an  epos,  from  I'haiuicians 
Down  to  merciuuiting  Venetians ! 
Argivo  galleys,  prows  of  Uonie, 
Heaeliing  e'en  on  our  old  home. 
Tell  how  Uome's  puissant  rule 
Reaches  to  the  fanhest  Tliule, 
Ami  from  loua's  cloistered  halls 
Christ's  spell  northmost  lauds  enthralls. 
And  Iceland,  warming  in  its  gleam, 
Blossoms  in  church  and  academe ; 
Until,  Ruri)assing  all  the  earth 
In  learning  and  in  moral  worth, 
Forth  sends,  in  first  millennial  year, 
I'rinces  and  bishops  even  hero ! 


WUNDERSTRAND. 

Tell  net  us  that  all  is  writ 

Of  Ocean's  lore,  —  not  us  who  sit 

From  birth  in  sight  of  Ocean's  wonder. 

And  dream  what  therein  is  or  under. 

Many  a  record  writ  in  water, 

Making  liistory-books  the  shorter, 

Reappears  to  him  who  heeds 

The  truth  that  every  law  must  needs 

Hear  but  one  fruitage,  near  or  far, 


T 


I' t 


48 

This  ngo  or  Hint,  on  any  star. 

So  clear-eyed  Science,  sukc,  sediito, 

Hidden  by  Fancy  all  elate, 

Constructs  the  ships  the  dreamer  dreams, 

Fi}^uring  the  very  ribs  and  seams, 

And,  led  by  poet's  ecstasies, 

More  and  more  of  truth  still  sees. 

Shore-dwellers  never  ipiit  tlieir  stand 

Of  watch  upon  the  wonderstrand. 

Noting  the  moods  of  the  changing  sea 

For  what  new  teaching  thence  may  be. 

E'en  seaweed  thrilling  message  bore, 

"In  the  sun  and  the  wind  and  the  wild  uproar," 

To  him  who  sang  how  Hoston  Hay 

Takes  Boston  in  her  arms  each  day. 

The  child  tlio  salt  waves  reared  beside. 

Whose  jilayfellow  is  the  rising  tide. 

And  tiny,  monster-peoplfd  pool, 

Among  the  rocks,  his  earliest  school, — 

No  chapter  of  a  sea  romaunt 

His  fervent  faith  may  ever  daunt. 

The  time-worn  wreck's  ribs  in  the  sand 

For  chapel  uf  devotions  stand. 

He  knows  the  wild-flowers  of  the  deep, 

The  harvests  strange  that  fisliers  reap. 

Eels  Portuguese,  and  sipiids.  and  whales. 

He  lists  old  seamen  tell  their  tales; 

He  sees  one  morn  from  shining  sea 

A  fin  revolved  all  silently. 

Marking  Behemoth's  bulk  beneath. 

Or  sea-dog's  eye  in  green  wave's  wreath. 

He  sees  the  ebl)  bare  Ocean's  bed. 

And  flood  the  broad  seas  inland  spread; 

Shudders  at  storm-rote  in  tlie  night. 

And  finds  the  broken  ship  at  li^ht. 


40 


IIo  knowH  how  Iiuiniiij,'  Hail  round  up 

From  uiiderworlil, —  tirsl  llio  miiiiittii>. 

And  Uiun  tlio  ini/.7,cii,  and  then  tliu  hull, 

Ah  up  thu  long  hwuU  ridos  tliu  gull. 

He  onoo  beholUti  in  a  miruge 

l$rig9  hottoin  up  and  8tranf,'fly  largo 

Slund  in  tho  sky  athwart  limad  Sound, — 

A  8worn  sea-serpent'a  sauntering  ground, — 

And  harks  the  nixeys  ring  the  bell 

Whose  dolora  mark  the  east  wind's  swell. 

Ills  childhood's  awe  is  ne'er  forgot 

Of  niaulstroni  in  steep  Shirley  (iut, 

Nor  seasoned  yet  tho  ciiild's  surpriso 

Who  saw  before  his  infant  eyes 

Side-wheeled  Cuiuirder  overwiielm 

Willi  I'.riti.sli  smoke  the  wine-glass  dm 

Of  Apple  Island.     Small  things?     True: 

Small  thing  for  wonder  is  it,  too, 

That  ships  that  fared  to  Greenland's  shore 

Should  southwnrd  fare  a  little  more: 

Gloucester  now  fishes  Iceland  seas, 

Iceland  then  came  to  I'enikcse, 

Light  then  as  now  did  shallop  run 

0'(!r  morning  sea  in  jocund  sun, 

Hands  stout  as  now  when  night  winds  rave 

The  rudder  gnis{)ed  and  cut  the  wave, 

Sweet  then  as  now  the  smooth  bay's  reach, 

And  soft  to  keel  the  sandy  beach. 

A  marvel  greater  far  it  were 

If  ne'er  a  bold  adventurer. 

To  make  the  fartiiest  voyage  his  boast, 

Had  wandered  on  from  coast  to  coast. 

Would  such  his  lengthening  leagues  have  reckoned 

So  long  as  Blue  Hill  onward  beckoned  ? 


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VINLAND  RUNE. 


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1    ' 


SiNO  we,  then,  a  rugged  rune. 

In  Emerson's  and  Whittier's  tune,  — 

Verse  for  honest-spoken  folk. 

Compact  of  stuff  as  egg  of  yolk. 

Simple,  blunt,  but  yet  not  coarse  ; 

Native,  and  still  something  Norse, 

As  is  meet  for  kindred  race 

Dwelling  in  the  very  place 

Where  the  Norsemen  moored  their  ships 

And  left  their  names  on  savage  lips. 

Italian  Colon  Iceland  sought, 

And  tales  the  bardic  sagas  taught 

Of  ancient  trips  to  Western  seas 

Were  treiisured  by  the  Genoese. 

Americus's  traitorous  tale 

Too  long  is  suffered  to  prevail: 

Christopher  was  not  alone 

Victim  for  a  time  outshone, 

Where  that  crafty  story  spread. 

Other  voyages  now  are  read, 

Other  learning  now  avails, 

With  North  and  South  in  balanced  scales. 

Not  for  all  wear  are  silk  and  satin  ; 

Not  all  was  writ  in  Greek  and  Latiu ; 

Tongues  in  rich  diversity 

Make  modern  university 

Open  arms  to  newest  lore, 

Thin  conceits  of  old  give  o'er. 

Barbarous  birth  our  langiiagt;  owns, 

Gothic  pith  is  in  our  bones ; 

Heart  of  heart  in  kinsliip  warms. 


61 

With  levelling  Vtndals'  peopling  swarms, 

Sturdiest  stocks  of  old  Caucasian, — 

Liberty,  self-rule,  their  passion, 

Ever  the  same  from  earliest  hour 

To  Alfred,  King,  and  our  own  Mayflower. 

From  folk-mote  to  the  Commonwealth 

Is  one  straight  march,  naught  won  by  stealth, 

But  bold  in  name  of  law  and  right. 

Of  people's  need  and  people's  might. 

Kingcraft  nor  priestcraft  frames  decree 

For  them  who  dare  the  unpassed  Uea. 


IDYLS. 


A  WONDROUS  task  waits  him  who  sings 

The  idyls  of  our  uncrowned  kings. 

But  who  begins  must  sail  with  Leif, 

Eai'l  Eric's  son,  and  that  oft  wife. 

Fair  Gudrid,  and  wise  Kailsefne, 

And  all  the  sagas'  company, — 

Peering,  like  pilot,  through  their  lore, 

Tlie  mist  and  flotsam  of  our  shore, 

Wafted  from  tliat  hurricane 

Of  Danish  vikings  from  the  main 

That  brought  Canute  to  Britain'^  coast, — 

Spiiwn  of  her  ocean-ruling  host, — 

And  reached  our  capes  with  circlings  spent 

Ere  Harold's  dynasty  was  rent. 

'Mid  these  dark  waves  of  history 

Comes  drift  galore  with  poesy. 


i 


Gudrid,  the  wife  of  three,  the  sage  and  sweet, 
Gudrid,  the  mother  of  that  Vinland  babe 


62 

Whose  coming  made  the  first  home  on  our  shores, 

Mother  of  Greenland  bishops,  and  herself 

In  saintly  age  welcomed  as  nun  at  Rome, — 

Of  all  sweet  women  of  the  idyl's  world 

None  than  our  Gudrid  is  more  debonair. 

What  time  brave  Leif  the  title  "Lucky"  won, 

Because  it  was  his  lot  to  save  a  score 

Of  shipwrecked  voyagers  huddled  on  a  rock 

In  midmost  ocean,  Gudrid  then  appears. 

First  Thorer's  bride,  still  but  a  fair-haired  girl, 

True  floweret  of  the  sea,  lissome  and  strong, 

Sharing  her  viking's  joys  and  strifes  and  toils. 

Leif 8  foster-sister  thence,  and  cherished  well: 

Her  husband  dead,  when  suitors  came  to  woo 

Leifs  word  decided  for  her,  and  by  him 

Was  given  her  hand  to  Thorstein  Ericsson. 

Penelope  was  not  more  chaste  and  wise : 

When  Thorstein  Black  folds  her  within  his  arms, 

Beside  her  second  husband's  dying  bed, 

She  gently  puts  him  by,  returns  to  Leif, 

And  understanding  well  (so  sing  the  bards), 

How  to  conduct  herself,  with  due  delay 

Weds  opulent  Karlsefne,  merchant  bold. 

And  with  him  fares  to  Vinland.     Here  one  day, 

As  Gudrid  sat  beside  her  cradled  babe, 

(The  baby  Snorro,  n;.nicd  Karlsefncsson, 

Grandsire  of  Ingveld,  mother  of  Bishop  Brand,) 

A  shadow  filled  the  doorway,  and  there  stood 

An  Indian  woman,  but  pale  and  wild  of  eye, 

(Such  eyes,  the  saga  saith,  that  none  so  large 

Were  ever  seen  in  human  face  before,) 

With  yellow  hair,  like  to  the  Northmen's  locks, 

A  kirtle  black  and  snood,  and  yearning  said, 

"What  art  thou  called?"    "Gudrid,"  the  wife  replied, 

And  bade  her  welcome.     "  And  what  art  thou  called  '■" ' 


68 

"Gudrid,"  the  savage  answered,  but  just  then 

Great  din  of  batile  rose  without  the  door, 

A  Skraelling  fell  slaiu  by  Karlsefne's  band, 

And  fled  the  great-eyed  squaw  with  yellow  hair. 

So  evermore  this  apparition  haunts 

The  Iceland  sagas ;  and  when  tales  went  round 

Of  Greenland  ships  that  never  had  returned. 

The  fair-haired  Skraelling  stirred  some  dread  surmise 

Of  Northmen  living  lost  on  that  far  coast, 

With  Skraelling  daughters  called  by  old  home  names. 

And  blond,  with  yellow  hair  and  wide  blue  eyes. 

So  Gudrid  passes,  graceful,  gracious  form, 
Amid  salt  bands  of  bearded  mariners. 
Bearing  to  Rome  their  grail  of  massur  wood, 
The  veinings  carven  in  a  woven  rede, 
With  Iceland's  falcon  as  a  dove  of  peace. 


See,  for  her  foil,  Preydis,  the  sister  strange 

Of  gentle  Leif,  manlike  as  Macbeth's  wife, 

Daughter  of  Erie,  the  red  handed  Earl, 

Heading  the  voyage  of  llelge  and  Finborg, 

Plotting  against  them  with  outnumbering  band, 

And  wlien  her  stronger  will  and  craft  had  won 

Advantage  over  them  and  discord  reigned. 

Slew  them  at  nigiit,  and  since  no  man  of  hers 

Would  slay  their  women,  "  Give  me  the  axe  I "  she  cried, 

Nor  stayed  her  arm  till  all  lay  in  their  blood  ; 

Then  stormed  upbraiding  to  her  husband's  bed. 

Hut  bribed  her  band  to  secrecy  at  home 

Of  all  the  sorry   .vork  on  Viuland  shore. 


TnoRHALL,  tlie  Hunter,  what  a  figure  he 
For  tale  of  heroes !     Burly,  taciturn, 
Sarcastic,  sceptic  'gainst  the  new-won  faith, 


64 


Thor  vaunting  over  Christ,  and  breaking  off 
From  his  companions  to  scour  strange  wilds  alone. 
The  Melancholy  Jacques's  prototype  1 
Him  the  fleet-footed  Scot  slaves  sent  to  save 
Found  lying  on  a  hill-top  muttering  verse, 
Breathing  the  whiles  in  frenzy  strarge  and  loud. 
Possessed  by  spirit  of  the  Norselaud  seer. 


And  what  a  Lancelot  these  sagaa  sing! 

Biorn  Asbrandsou,  wooer  of  Thurid,  the  wife 

Of  Thorodd,  whom  the  Orkneys'  Earl,  Sigurd, 

Owed  for  the  rescue  of  his  tithing-men. 

An  idyl  all  his  own  this  Biorn  claims  1 

None  but  great  Meister  of  the  Nibelung's  Lied 

Its  towering  passions  could  in  art  unfold, — 

Drama  of  wonders,  valkyrs,  chivalry, 

Of  combats,  bar.ishment,  and  dauntless  plans 

Of  guilty  heroism.     Tannhiiuser-like, 

The  erring  knight  to  tears  of  shame  is  brought 

By  Thurid's  brotiier,  the  priest  of  Ilelgafell, 

And  80  flies  in  self-exile  far  to  the  south ; 

And  after  many  years,  when  Iceland  men, 

Wrecked  beyond  Viiiland,  faced  a  warlike  host, 

As  sachem  (so  too  Northmen  called  their  king) 

Under  its  banner  rode  an  aged  knight. 

Tall,  straight,  white-bearded,  and  in  Northern  speech 

Addressed  them,  and  so,  learning  whence  they  came, 

Plied  them  with  questioning  of  things  at  home. 

Bade  them  make  sail  and  flee  while  yet  they  might ; 

But  ere  they  were  gone  whispered  to  Gudleif  low, 

"  This  sword  to  Kiarten,  hero  of  Froda,  take, 

And  to  his  mother  Thurid  give  this  ring!" 

And  so  is  left  this  knightly  figure  here, 

Foreruiuier,  haply,  of  great  sagamores. 

Friendly  Canonicus  and  Massasoit! 


56 


ENVOY. 


Bdild,  O,  liuild  in  loftier  lino 

Thau  this  prosing  verse  of  mine, 

Poets  of  our  native  land, 

An  epic  of  our  wonderstrand, 

Worthy  of  the  heroes'  grace 

Who  first  revealed  it  to  tiie  race. 

Lo !  our  own  heroic  age ! 

'Tis  our  classic  heritage, 
Linking  us  by  line  direct 

To  demigods  too  little  reciced 

Since  the  conquering  Latin  host 

Set  up  their  gods  for  those  wo  lost. 

Christian  sweetness,  Gothic  right, 

Married  in  one  shining  light, 

Breaking  mediaeval  night. 

Lit  on  Europe's  northern  shore 

Beacons  to  burn  forevermore. 

When  old  St.  Botolph's  tower  was  new. 

For  boat-help  builded  as  was  due 

That  seaman  saint  of  North  Sea's  shore. 

Men  still  told  Gudrid's  story  o'er, 

Her  pilgrimage,  her  wise,  brave  ways, 

Coupling  her  works  with  his  in  praise. 

This  tower  to  her  folk  we  rear, 

A  beacon  to  Discovery, — 

Since  ever  truth  shall  make  us  free, — 

That  our  free  thought  may  wax  the  freer, 

Tliat  we  may  welcome  aye  the  new. 

Patient  to  try  if  it  be  the  true. 

Nor  say  there  is  no  more  to  hear. 


